Backup media choices for FreeBSD servers

[Roland Smith]

On Tue, Apr 24, 2007 at 01:03:34PM -0700, L Goodwin wrote:
> Forgot to mention that off site storage is a priority. 

Please don't top-post.
 
> The USB drive option is interesting. I know thumb drives are not
> considered a good long-term storage solution, but for daily backups, I
> could rotate a couple of 2GB+ USB drives (until data grows too large).

I would get one with a real harddisk instead of a thumbdrive. More
capacity and probably a longer life.

Using USB drives, there might be a way to completely automate
backups. Using devd(8) it should be possible to detect that one of your
backup disks is being plugged in. This can then start a script to mount
the disk, perform the backups, unmount it and give the user a signal on
the console, or audible, that he can take the USB drive out.

If you're going to use thumbdrives, think about security. Such small
devices are easily lost or stolen. Either encrypt the individual backups
with programs like ccrypt(1) or gnupg(1), or use an encrpyted filesystem
layer like geli(8).

> Thanks to all for your experience, ideas and suggestions!

You're welcome.

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith                                   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
[plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated]
pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914  B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 (KeyID: C321A725)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 187 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/attachments/20070424/59bfa32d/attachment.pgp