Open Source backup product with bare metal restore

RangeR

*snip*
Probably wrong forum to ask.

Capt'n Midnight

dd
dd_rescue
partimage
clonezilla

there are loads

RangeR

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

dd
dd_rescue
partimage
clonezilla

there are loads

They don't allow full and incremental backup. Cloning a drive is useless if I can get it back to how it was "last night". Clone a month ago, then backup data is no good if I want to restore last nights registry or AD etc

croo

It's the "bare metal" aspect that makes me hesitate. The best known backup tools for Linux are probably Bacula & Amanda. I am hearing good things about "Back in Time" which seems to be inspired by apple's Time Machine. But I don't think any of these are intended for "bare metal" restores.

Perhaps you might consider ZFS that can take partition snapshots? Saw a demo of it once that was very impressive.

RangeR

Agreed. Amanda seems to be the closest to bare metal that I can get. Excepting that in a restore, I need to install windows first. Still, save me a lot of time in that I don't have to configure applications, users, PDC, AD etc.

I think I found a winner. Will have to purchase the live agents though.

Will use BackupPC for desktops. Don't need bare metal for them. Not important enough

Capt'n Midnight

Bare metal to me is when you can't be sure of repairing it so you restore the most recent full backup and you know you can't sort out the problem in a resonable timeframe then the relevant differentials. I'm not that big a fan of incrementals as everything has to go right.

a good test for bare metal is when migrating to another machine, kinda like a burn in test before you let it run live.

restoring last night's registry is not a bare metal restore
Boot up with a linux live CD and just copy the reg files from system volume etc. Most of the time you are waiting for the server to do two POST's

Can't remember if it's quicker to do a windows and backup exec install and then to tape or to try the backupexc by itself , main difference IIRC was the full install got better drivers depending on the devices and if you had a lot of data then best to do the manual method to restore the important stuff first rather than have the box offline for ages.

if using windows and you have more than one Drive (not partition) , have you considered ASR for the system drive on the basis that it's easy to do and it might just come in handy some day


is ZFS for linux production stable yet ?


Backuppc is good alright

RangeR

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Bare metal to me is when you can't be sure of repairing it so you restore the most recent full backup and you know you can't sort out the problem in a resonable timeframe then the relevant differentials. I'm not that big a fan of incrementals as everything has to go right.

To me, Bare Metal Restore is when I can do a restore without installing the OS first, getting me back up and online in minutes to an hour or two, rather than hours or days. I don't want to have to re-configure each server and install all of it's applications and services again.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

a good test for bare metal is when migrating to another machine, kinda like a burn in test before you let it run live.

Totally agree. Every backup solution should be tested in restoring before being put live.

I'll look into ASR. Might be interesting as a base line.
Yes, pretty much finalised BackupPC as the desktop backup solution.