FreeBSD server(s) to backup multi-platform systems remotely

[Jacob S]

On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 14:15:27 -0500
Danny <nocmonkey at gmail.com> wrote:

> Good day to you all,
> 
> I would greatly appreciate any recommendations, related experiences,
> and tips for the following goal:
> 
> On a monthly and manual basis - to take a snapshot of data from a
> FreeBSD server and Windows server. Then compress and hopefully encrypt
> the data and send it to a remote FreeBSD server through some form of
> efficient and secure file transfer. Uncompressed a snapshot of all the
> data may total over ~8GB.
> 
> On a nightly and automated basis - to take a snapshot of all new and
> modified data from a FreeBSD server and Windows server. Then compress
> and hopefully encrypt the data and send it to a remote FreeBSD server
> through some form of efficient and secure file transfer. Uncompressed
> the nightly data may total ~20MB.
> 
> Anytime (assuming the remote server IS available, of course)  - have
> the ability to access the data and restore the data files to any
> systems respective of what type it came from (Windows or BSD, etc).
> And if a full restore was necessary, the data may total over 10GB.
> 
> Hardware and network-wise... here is what I was thinking:
> 
> FreeBSD & Windows Servers on the LAN
> |
> | LAN - firewalled
> v
> FreeBSD server where all the data would be collected and compressed 
> v
> |
> | Internet - secure connection or transport of some type (SCP, SSH,
> VPN, etc.)|
> | Remote co-lo
> v
> FreeBSB server where all the data would be stored with at least RAID 1

I'm no FreeBSD expert, so others may know of a better solution. That
said, I use BackupPC from http://backuppc.sf.net in Linux. It's not
platform specific though, and can back up anything from *BSD to Linux to
Windows to Mac OS X.

Sending the resulting tar ball to a remote server would need to be done
via a simple script file, but could be tied into the backup process
using the DumpPostUserCmd or ArchivePostUserCmd variables.

HTH,
Jacob