[Dirvish] More questions about dual on-site/off-site back-ups

[Petcher, Daniel]

I implement this by a separate weekly vault on a removable RAID-5 array.

In my /etc/dirvish/master.conf file, I've added a line:
post-server: /usr/local/bin/update_symlink

Here's the script:
#!/bin/sh
# jump to current vault
echo "Current target path:"
echo $DIRVISH_DEST
# echo .
# echo "PWD"
# pwd
cd $DIRVISH_DEST/../..
    rm recent
    mv current recent
    ln -s $DIRVISH_DEST current
    echo "Updated pointer to current backup"

When the weekly backup job comes along, I back-up the "current" directory to
the offsite vault. I maintain that "recent" pointer in case the daily
dirvish-report tells me there was some problem that might make me want to
re-run the day's backup manually.

I wait until the daily backup job has finished collecting data across the
network, then I manually launch the weekly offsite backup job and sit back
while it rsyncs data across the local SCSI bus.

-dP

-----Original Message-----
From: dirvish-bounces at dirvish.org [mailto:dirvish-bounces at dirvish.org] On
Behalf Of Brian Martin
Sent: Saturday, June 24, 2006 10:27 AM
To: dirvish at dirvish.org
Subject: [Dirvish] More questions about dual on-site/off-site back-ups

> I have a plan I'm trying to hatch.. and would like to hear other 
> people's thoughts and ideas on how to achieve it.

[snip]
 
I've broken this off as a separate thread, because I have a slightly
different, perhaps simpler issue.  Like Hanj, I'd like other's thoughts on
this.  And it might be the basis of Hanj's answer, too.

I'm using dirvish to keep on-site back-ups, and it works fine.  Now I'm
adding an offsite component using removable hard drives.  There will always
be an offsite hard drive loaded, and so whenever I run a back-up, I want it
written in two places -- the on-site permanent disk, and whichever off-site
removable disk happens to be loaded at the moment.  Off-site disks will be
switched weekly.

Since the off-site disk doesn't contain the same data as the on-site disk
(the off-site disk may have just arrived back after being gone for a couple
of weeks), I think I'm either forced to either:

A) run back-ups twice, once for on-site and once for off-site
B) treat the off-site back-up as RAID-1 mirror.  When it comes back on-site
add it to a mirror of the on-site partition, let it resync, and do nothing
until it's time to send it off-site again.

The problems with option B are that there are special procedures I have to
do when it comes back on-site (so a staff member can't do it without
training), and the remirroring wipes whatever was on the off-site drive
before, so that if the on-site data got corrupted somehow I can't look to
the off-site drive as an alternative recovery source.

Thoughts?

          -Brian


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