Re: [Burp-users] retention plan for database backups

[Michael K. <mh...@ko...>]

On Wed, Mar 8, 2017 at 1:55 AM, Graham Keeling <gr...@gr...> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 06, 2017 at 03:29:44PM +0100, Christian Vieser wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm curious how to set up proper retention for our database backups. With our current system, we transfer daily db dumps and hourly binarylogs to the backup server. Data is deleted on the db servers after successful transfer to the central backup space.
>>
>> The daily full backups should be kept for 4 weeks, while the binarylogs (needed for point in time restore) only need a retention of 10 days. I currently see no easy way to define such a policy with burp, but perhaps I have overseen something. For the reduction algorithm of burp every single backup session seems to be equivalent, I've seen no possibility to mark the full backups as superior to the incrementals. If I interpret the manual correctly, it would work if I could manage to declare the full backups as "hardlinked". But unfortunately this seems to be no client option, so I can't set it along with the client backup invocation.
>>
>> Is there any way I could achieve the intended behaviour? Any suggestions how to change my backup procedure? (keeping the backup data on the db servers is not possible, this would need too much diskspace)
>>
>> Thanks for any advice,
>> Christian
>
> Hello,
>
> Sorry, but I don't know how to achieve what you want, other than by keeping at
> least 4 weeks of continuous backups.
>
> That is:
> keep = 28
>

If you were to set hardlinked_archive=1 (making EVERY backup
hardlinked) and keep=28 (or more) in your burp server config, then you
could (via some other script) remove any backup you like without
compromising burp's ability to restore from the remaining backups.

YOU would have to take responsibility for figuring out which backups
can safely be removed at that point.

ALSO - this may significantly increase the amount of disk space that
you'll need for backups, given that you'd be giving up deltas in burp.


-- 
Michael Kohne
mh...@ko...