continuous backup solution for FreeBSD

[Mike Meyer]

On Fri, 10 Oct 2008 02:34:28 +0300
yurtesen at ispro.net wrote:

> Quoting "Oliver Fromme" <olli at lurza.secnetix.de>:
> 
> > These features are readily available right now on FreeBSD.
> > You don't have to code anything.
> 
> Well with 2 downsides,

Once you actually try and implement these solutions, you'll see that
your "downsides" are largely figments of your imagination.

> The fact that I still would need to take full backups once in a while  

Every time you started backing up a new file system. This is a
requirement of all backup solutions. After that, never again.

> The bigger problem is that I have to convert all my filesystems to  
> ZFS. Can one convert UFS2 to ZFS easily even?

I didn't have any trouble. And once you do it, you have advantages
that the poor schmucks using Linux can only dream about: like
self-healing file systems that are so cheap and easy to create that it
makes sense to put each application or jail on it's own file system,
one that's tuned for the application. The ability to set up raid and
mirror devices without ever having to deal with LLVM (worth the cost
of entry all by itself), not having to worry about allocating
partitions, and - well, the list just goes on and on. Having converted
to ZFS on my FreeBSD boxes, the only thing I feel for my clients still
using Linux file systems is pity.

> this on 'any' filesystem they use 

I seriously doubt that it supports things like GMailFS.

> How am I suppose to compete with  
> companies which use Linux otherwise if I am doing this sort of tasks  
> all the time?

Well, once you've done the conversion, by outproducing them while they
waste time dealing with LLVM, partitions, and other such crap that ZFS
frees you from.

> Thanks for all the advices but my original question was if somebody  
> can give inside information to a company(for example r1soft) which is  
> writing CDP backup solutions so they could implement such solution on  
> FreeBSD also. Do you know such person?

The only "inside information" here is held by the company (for example
rlsoft) providing the CDP software. On the FreeBSD side, the source
and documentation are all freely available to anyone who wants to look
at it. But it doesn't matter how well you know FreeBSD, you aren't
going to get anywhere unless you also you know what the software from
that company needs in order to operate.

If said company wanted to hire someone to either write this or to help
get their people started working with FreeBSD, then the thing to do is
send mail to jobs at freebsd.org announcing the position. If they aren't
interested in hiring someone, but hope to get it done for free, then
they should set up a web page providing the technical details that
someone who knows FreeBSD (or is willing to learn it) needs to do the
job.

If all you want is a CDP solution and you don't care where it comes
from - well, you pretty much get the same two choices. It's an
interesting enough problem that you might get someone to build it for
free, but don't expect it to use proprietary software from some
company that already provides such a thing for other systems. Nor - if
you don't provide any incentive for meeting your requirements - should
you expect it to actually meet them.

    <mike

-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>		http://www.mired.org/consulting.html
Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information.

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