[ale] Backups (What are you using?)

[Pat Regan]

Sean C. McCord wrote:
> As to off-site:  it does not matter to rsync where the backup server is.
> The bulk of my data is transferred off site over a DSL uplink...
> ~512kbps.  Since only the _changes_ are sent, the available bandwidth
> does not really matter that much.

If you are using rsync over slow links for your backups then the overall
size of your backups is mostly irrelevant.  The average number of bytes
that change every day is much more important.

Whenever I set something like this up, I run the initial backup locally
and physically move the backup server to the remote site.

> For anyone interested, the following method is invaluable to anyone using
> rsync to perform incremental backups:
> http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/

I keep seeing rsync snapshots mentioned.  They do the job very well.
However, I like rdiff-backup much better.  Each rdiff-backup snapshot
stores something similar to the amount of data that is transfered over
the wire during the backup.  That lets you fit a lot more snapshots in
the same space, especially if you have large files with smaller daily
changes.

http://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/non-gnu/rdiff-backup/

Pat

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