This is are my notes and hopefully other people's comments on how to backup a unix based operating system and do a restore using another server to store the files.

ideally... the tool would login remotely into a server and begin backing up the server to it. You could then use a tool to recover from that remote server to another server.

So in this scenario we have three servers

server1 - has all the files and is working fine to include hosting a mySQL database and websites

server2 - new server that you would like to migrate over to (also could be a replacement server for failed server1)

server3 - backup server (just alot of space) that requires AD authentication

Goal

• backup all files from server1 to server3
• restore server1 on server2 and see if it comes up using that system (so disaster recovery).. getting an idea of how much time it would take to get system back online and build the process
• also restore certain files from server3 to server2

Something I am starting to look into is a very highly recommended system called BackupPC

I was looking at Bacula but it is seriously complicated with many hooks and its just so confusing and complicated. I want something much easier to use and it looks like BackupPC might be the answer. Not a big fan of PC used in the name but I can overlook it if it works. From what I have read it backs up pretty much any operating system. I will post more. Look under the CentOS forum for instructions on how to install.

USING RSYNC TO BACKUP AND RESTORE

SYNC From local to remote computer

rsync -avz --delete /source/folder user@remote.server:/destination/folder

SYNC From remote to local computer

rsync -avz --delete user@remote.server:/source/folder /destination/folder

The --delete option will delete the files in the destination folder, that have been deleted in the source folder, that way the two folders will always be in sync.



NOTE: If you need to limit bandwidth used from in a rsync backup connection use --bwlimit=KBPS and tell rsync how much bandwidth in Kbytes pers second can be used.



BACKUP /var/www from 10.6.56.245 to 10.6.56.100 (ftp server)



RESTORE /var/www from 10.6.56.100 to 10.6.56.244



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COPY From local to remote

rsync --progress --partial -avz /folder/to/copy/ user@remote.server:/remote/folder

NOTE: This will copy all files in /folder/to/copy/ to /remote/folder in the remote server, the folder copy itself will not be created in the remote computer, and only its contents will be copied, if you want the folder itself to also be created and then its contents copied inside the newly created copy folder, use this command.

rsync --progress --partial -avz /folder/to/copy user@remote.server:/remote/folder

NOTE: the trailing slash after copy that makes the difference. The rest of options are:

• progress: will show the percentage of the file copied

• partial: tells rsync to keep the partial file which should make a subsequent transfer of the rest of the file much faster.

• a: Archive, It is a quick way of saying you want recursion and want to preserve almost everything.

• v: Verbose

• z: Compress the files so less bandwidth is needed, and the files are copied faster.