[BackupPC-users] Q: Occasional 'backup' of backupPC to offsite ..

[Tim C. <tch...@gm...>]

Hi,

I was reviewing the recent thread on the topic of "how to make a
backup copy of my backupPC server" - ie - for offsite backup
redundancy.. and I wanted to see if this is done / doable, given
certain circumstances,

- second site is 100Mb connection (can get ~10-12megs per second
through the network)
- replicate copy pushed not too frequently (maybe weekly or monthly)
- storage pool size likely to start at ~ hundred gigs and creep up
towards a few Tb over time
- target storage is accessible via rsync, SSH, or iSCSI even.

I wonder, for example, about simply creating a cron job that

- mounts the remote iSCSI volume
- stops BackupPC from running
- uses either cp with -a flag; rsync with -H flag (has memory issues
possibly when large data set is being moved?); or possibly better, the
script apparently bundled with BackupPC 3.0 and later,
"BackupPC_tarPCCopy " (?) to bring a copy of data from the source
filesystem to the destination .. ?
- once completed, unmount the remote iSCSI filesystem  and then bring
backupPC back online.

Clearly, this has undesirables; such as, copying stuff verbatim rather
than doing incremental / differential only transfers  if using the
tar-based script (?); having to delete the 'offsite copy' prior to
putting a new one there, assuming the remote disk isn't big enough to
have both the old and the new offsite copies exist at the same time...

Any thoughts or comments .. certainly are appreciated.. and I'm sorry
if I'm revisiting a old tired familiar query here .. I had trouble
getting any hits past the most recent ones on this topic in the forum.


Thanks,


Tim