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One of the main reasons that people give for not performing backups is that it is too difficult. The Back In Time program solves that issue for anyone using Linux, Ubuntu, Redhat, Slackware, etc. Both Gnome and KDE version are available.

Back-In-Time uses file system hardlinks to manage snapshots efficiently. This trick has been used for 20+ years on UNIX operating systems to provide backups. That means it has been well proven, but it also means this technique doesn’t work on Windows because hardlinks in Windows work differently. After the first complete copy is made to the backup area, any snapshots made after that point use hardlinks for each file that doesn’t change. Basically, it costs ZERO storage to make additional hardlinks. Neato.

The last few days, I’ve been trying to improve the manner that I copy large (2+GB) files around both locally and between systems.

I looked at 4 different programs and captured very simple stats using the time command. The programs tested were:

1. cp
2. scp
3. rsync
4. bigsync

I’d considered trying other programs like BigSync, but really wanted something at supported incremental backups to the same file and handled it without too much complexity. I would have liked to use zsync, but my understanding is that is an HTTP protocol and can’t be used for local copies. I wasn’t interested in setting up apache with SSL between internal servers.

Here’s a simple one question test for whether you have good backups or not.

Question: If any of your main hard disks started making a loud clicking sound right now does that idea freak you out or make you nervous?

If you have any answer beside, “No, bring it on” then your backups aren’t good enough.

Simple. I KNOW that I can wipe my HOME directory from my main system and be completely fine. There is the backup from last night on another machine that I can restore easily. If I really need access, those files are available while on the other machine too. Further, there are 90 days of incremental backups available, so if I delete something important and don’t miss it for a few weeks, I can still get it back. Honestly, I’m less confident about some other system backups, but my main desktop computer and all the company server machines don’t cause me any worry at all. I’m 100% confident. Sure, it could be a hassle, but a few hours later, the data would be back. That’s the point of backups, right? Sometimes, about 2 times a year, one of my system backups fail or get corrupted in some way. As long as that doesn’t happen on the same night that the source system has a failure, I’m fine.

For really important data, there are multiple copies on multiple systems, so even if there is some corruption, there are other copies available. Worst case, I could loose 2 days of data, but not everything. I’d restore the OS, applications, application settings AND the data. Because we use virtualization, we aren’t tied to specific hardware … pretty much any current machine can be used to restore onto. There’s no need to search for a specific RAID controller or motherboard or … whatever. Virtualization frees us from that stuff.

Of course, much of my confidence comes from actually performing restores and seeing them work. While we all say to practice the restore, most people don’t have a spare machine to try it out. I know we don’t, but every once in a while, an accident happens and a restore is the quickest answer.

Shouldn’t you be that confident about your backups too?

21 of the Best Free Linux Backup Tools – but this list doesn’t include my favorite, rdiff-backup. Sniff, sniff.
Lifehacker Backup – For anyone running Windows7, just use the built-in backup tool. It is very good and behaves much like rdiff-backup. For Windows Servers, open your wallet and check out Netbackup or EMC Networker. For VMware backups (ESX/ESXi), Trilead VMX is fairly inexpensive as far as VM backup tools go, but it doesn’t support incremental backups.

I like rdiff-backup to backup your HOME directories and Virtual Machines efficiently. Ok, that is a little understated, I LOVE rdiff-backup.

So, every 6 months or so, when it lets me down in some way, I have to recall all the good things that is actually does solve. Things like:

• Efficient backup times; just a few minutes to backup entire virtual machines
• Efficient backup storage; about 10% more storage for 30 days of backups than a mirror (rsync) uses.
• Easy recovery for 1 file from the latest backup (really it is trivial, just a file copy)
• Easy recovery of a complete backup set from X days ago (I’ve tested this more than I like)
• Easy to get information about backup increments and sizes for each.
• FLOSS software from GNU (not commercial)
• Backup failures get rolled back – you always get a complete, clean set.
• No screwing around with SQL databases or other less than easy to understand crap.

Your computer guys are always talking about some coming disaster and trying to get budget for a DR, Disaster Recovery failover location. There never seems to be enough funds. Heck, you may be lucky to get backups rotated to an offsite location.

A story in Dallas Morning News, Water-main break cripples Dallas County computers, operations explains what happened to take down the county computer systems.

Here’s an insightful article at the Boston Review on How Software as a Service Takes Away Your Freedom. SaaS has been hyped as the way to deploy solutions quickly, pay for only what you need, when you need it, and avoid all the infrastructure costs. There are some important things that the hype leaves out.

Last evening, I noticed that my Dell 1535 Laptop wasn’t responsive. It was recording a TV show with the Hauppauge 950Q USB QAM tuner at the time, among other things that it always does.

Below I’ll discuss symptoms, trouble shooting methods and my resolution

Many companies don’t really consider the bloating of server operating systems as a real problem to be addressed. This is wrong because as soon as you write any data to disk, you’ve just signed up your company to safeguard that data multiple times (3-90) for the next 3-5 years, if not longer.

How did I come up with this?

Assumptions – hopefully realistic for your situation

• Windows 2008 Server – 20GB installation for the OS only (MS says 32GB of disk is the min)
• Data is stored on a SAN, so we will ignore it. The size of data isn’t the issue in this article.
• Compressed and incremental backups are performed with 30 days retained.
• At least 1 copy is maintained off site for DR

Break down of backup disk use

• Install image – 20GB of storage
• OS Backup – 20GB of storage
• Off site Backup – 20GB of storage
• 2 extra copies of backup – 40GB of storage

Total is 100GB of storage media for a single Windows 2008 Server install. Not all that bad, really. Then consider that even small businesses probably have 5 computer servers, that becomes 500GB of storage. Still not so bad. Heck, your DR plan is just to copy the last backup to an external drive and take it home every Friday. Good enough.

Now imagine you have 50 or 100 or 1000 or 20,000 installations. Now it gets tougher to deal with. Those simple backups become 25TB, 50TB, 500TB and 10PB of storage and you haven’t got anything but the OS backed up – no data.

Alternatives?

1. Data deduplication on archive storage frames
2. Fixed OS images – if they are all the same, you only need 1 backup
3. Use a smaller OS image

Data Deduplication

Data Deduplication has been an expensive option that small companies with normal data requirements wouldn’t deploy due to cost, complexity and lacking skills. This is about to change with the newest Sun ZFS that should be out early 2010. It is already available in OpenSolaris, if you want to get started with trials. I’ve seen demonstrations with 90% OS deduplication. That means for every added server OS install, you only add 10% more to be backed up. Obviously, this will increase whenever a new OS or patch deployment over weeks and months occur, but this solution is compelling and will easily pay for itself with any non-trivial server infrastructure.

Fixed OS Images

This is always a good idea, but with the way that MS-Windows performs installations, files are written all over the place and registry entries are best applied only by installation tools. Configuration methods on Windows tends to be point and click, which can’t be scripted effectively.

On UNIX-like operating systems, base images can be installed, application installation scripted and overall configuration settings scripted too. There are a number of tools that make this easy, like Puppet. This is FOSS.

Use a Smaller OS

Xen Ubuntu Linux 8.04.x running a complete enterprise messaging system with over a years worth of data is under 8GB including 30 days of incremental backups. Other single purpose server disk requirements are smaller, much smaller. This blog server is 2.6GB with 30days of incremental backups. That’s almost a 10x factor smaller than MS-Windows server. Virtualization helps too. JeOS is a smaller Ubuntu OS install meant for virtual servers.

No Single Answer

There is no single answer to this problem. I doubt any company can run completely on Linux systems only. Data deduplication is becoming more and more possible for backups, but it isn’t ready for transactional, live systems. Using fixed OS images is a best practice, but many software systems demand specialized installation and settings which make this solution exponentially complex.

A hybrid solution will likely be the best for the next few years, but as customers, we need to voice our concerns over this issue with every operating system provider.

Today, we make a list of important items to take with us should we need to leave home quickly for 3 days.

What’s Your Backup Plan?

Over the next few days and weeks, we’ll try to discuss what you need to plan in advance and what to take with you when a disaster occurs in your part of the world.

• Part 1-the scenario
• Part 2-Preparation is Key
• Part 3-System Backups

Don’t think disaster will happen? These people had now way to know their data center was going down.

About the author:
I’ve worked for a large telecom company designing computer and network systems that keep working after a disaster occurs. Those plans are tested twice a year – most of the time the first test doesn’t completely work, but you learn and make corrections. Over the years, you get better and better at it and learn that having the exact software stack isn’t all you need – sometimes the hardware is 1-of-a-kind too. Or the software assumed EXACT IP addresses and won’t work anywhere else or if an interfacing system isn’t at a particular IP address.
Don’t forget that all the normal people that run the computers and network are gone. They’ve been evacuated elsewhere and you need to plan for their extended absence. Not1 or 2 people, but hundreds of your critical support people. They don’t have cell phones.

Ok, so your life isn’t this complex. Neither is it as simple as jumping you and the family into the minivan and driving away. Be Prepared.