[kwlug-disc] Backup and Recovery in the 21st Century

Chris Irwin chris at chrisirwin.ca
Fri Jan 8 15:09:07 EST 2010


On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 14:23, Richard Weait <richard at weait.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 2:01 PM, Chris Irwin <chris at chrisirwin.ca> wrote:
> > So it looks my Tape Library is no more. It is an ex-Tape Library.
> >
> > I thought I would ping the list to see what everybody else is doing for
> > Backup and Recovery, both in terms of physical storage (I've got 700GB
> and
> > growing) to software used.
>
> I've been playing with Unison.
>
> Backup"server" <---> Unison <---> Desktop
> ^
> |
> v
> Unison
> ^
> |
> v
> Laptop
>
> So it is really backup / restoral and sync.  I'd like to add some
> other bells and whistles but for now this is pretty nice.
>

I really like Unison. I use it between Laptop and Server, and Desktop just
mounts $home over nfs4 (I'm gigabit ethernet at home, so for my purposes I
don't even notice). For those that don't know, it essentially works like
two-way rsync with both a gui and console client. I still want off-site
though. Something I can take to work with me on Monday mornings in case my
house is broken into, catches fire, water-heater shoots out of it like a
rocket leaving computer debris in it's wake, etc.

A funny anecdote about backups and photos: In the days gone by you had
prints and negatives. If your house burned down, you lost them. Luckily
house fires were/are rather uncommon and those involved are relatively happy
to simply live through the event. Now we have the technology to make sure we
never lose another photo again, but instead years of memories will be lost
because you spilled your coffee on your laptop. :)

-- 
Chris Irwin
<chris at chrisirwin.ca>
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