Remote backup hosting setup?

[Bart Silverstrim]

On Aug 4, 2004, at 1:44 PM, Chris Shenton wrote:

> Tim Aslat <tim at spyderweb.com.au> writes:
>
>> Try one of the multitude of rsync based scripts, you can even get some
>> very good incremental backups happening,
>
> I have been thinking about this for my own use.  One problem with
> basic rsync is that if (say) I trash a critical file and don't notice
> it for a couple days, the (nightly) rsync will have overwritten the
> good version with the trashed version.

Yes.

> So I've been thinking of having maybe 5 different copies at the
> destination and rsyncing to a different one each night so I have 5
> different "backups" to go to -- just like in the days of
> tape. Something conceptually like:

<cut>

I use a similar setup.

Actually what I have for two servers is a scheme where you have system 
A and system B.  System A has a directory tree to back up.

System B pulls that directory daily from A using rsync over SSH.  It 
will create a "synced image" of the tree to a local directory.

Next system B decides if it is a regular workday or a friday, then if 
it's a workday it saves a gzip'ed tarball of the snapshot to a "daily" 
archive directory.  If it is a friday, it saves the snapshot to a "long 
term" archive directory.  It then runs a check for files that are 
greater than 7 or 8 days old in their creation time in the daily 
archive and deletes them, or if it's the long term archive run it'll 
check for files older than about three months and delete them.  The 
filenames are composed of the dates embedded in the filenames.

That way you have a week-long backup as well as a weekly backup going 
back several months.

> Also, the original poster mentioned the source was windoze.  If you
> google "rsync windows" you'll find help on installing ssh and rsync on
> a Windoze box so maybe you don't need UNIX at your client's firm.

Try cygwin, running a ssh server as a service on 2000/xp.  That should 
be all you'd need on the windows side listening as the server process.

Or a batch file could kick it off I supposed, or at job...

Depends really on how the OP wants to set it up...if they map network 
drives already, it would just be a case of copying 
J:\etc......otherwise fun scripts to mount shares on remote servers.  
Or run the backups from a central server.  And they'd also have to 
decide if they're going to push or pull the backup...

Have fun!
-Bart