[lbackup-discussion] rsync based backups

[henri]

This email is a reply to a post to the Apple OS X Server Mailing list relating to backups using rsync.

> I would like rotational backups, and to be able to hold a defined set of days worth, where I can also set the script to run every x hours, and have that many backups for each day.

Currently, LBackup only supports this kind of setup with multiple backup configurations. One for dealing with the current day and one for dealing with the hourly backups. You may also add additional backup configurations to so that you have monthly or yearly backups.

Although this approach is slightly more complex to setup, as the administrator you gain a great deal of flexibility. As an example, you are free to decide to have the two backup sets hard linked together to save space or to have completely separate backup sets even on different media. 

This means that your hourly based backups may be set to backup to high speed devices. You also are free to backup from the hourly backups or from the source system.

Depending upon how much data is changing, you may find that fast disk system is required for minute or hourly backups. The locking features of LBackup allow you to ensure that only one backup is running at once. If you must start a backup every minute then you may also opt to have multiple backup sets and then combine the time based links into a single directory for easily locating the restore set.

There are various reasons that LBackup has a number based rotating system rather than a date based system. It is essentially to move people to this kind of linked setup, as it has proven to be more reliable if you are running multiple simultaneous backups.

LBackup is still very much in development and as such input on how this works is   welcomed. The more feed back about how this works the better. Also, suggestions about how it could work more effectively are also welcomed.

Some alternatives to LBackup are listed at the following URL : <http://www.lbackup.org/alternatives>

Finally, if you are backing up frequently to keep revisions of files which are being frequently edited on a web server then a version control system such as git <http://git-scm.com/> may be worth considering. A version control system such as git allows quick roll backs in the advent that you need to revert to a previous version of your file or project. In many situations it will also make editing an off line version a great deal easier.