Re: [BackupPC-users] splitting backups... how?

[Les M. <les...@gm...>]

Mauro Condarelli wrote:
>
> 1) I have to backup multiple servers and their composed storage exceeds
> the capacity of my current backup media (500Gb SATA disk); I will add a
> second one and that would be enough (for the time being). Problem is I
> would like to avoid using Virtual Volumes (LVM), if at all possible, so
> I thought I could backup some servers on one disk and others on the
> other, but I don't know how (end if it is possible at all), since I see
> only one TopDir setting and nothing comparable in the per-host configs.
> How should I proceed?


If you have another machine that isn't busy at night, the simple 
solution is to just run a completely separate instance of backuppc and 
split the clients up. One of the nice things about free software is that 
it doesn't cost any more to run more copies.

You can use RAID0 to combine disks but keep in mind that it (or LVM) 
makes it twice as likely that you will lose data since a single disk 
failure will lose data from both.  A safer alternative would be to use a 
pair of 750gig or 1TB drives which aren't horribly expensive these days 
in a RAID1 configuration.  With software raid you can recover from 1 
disk even if you move it to a different machine/controller.

> 2) I am a bit confused about the schedule configuration. What I would
> like to achieve is just a single backup cycle: Full backup once a week
> and daily Incremental ones; as soon as I have a complete new Full I want
> to discard all old ones (Full & Incremental). What is the right setting
> to achieve this?

That can work, but unless your target machines are unusual, I would 
recommend keeping at least 2 fulls.  My most common reason to recover 
something is that a user deleted or modified some files and didn't 
realize until a few days later that they needed the old ones back.  With 
the scheme you propose there will be a day where you only have the 
previous night's run.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    les...@gm...