[nzlug] remote backup/drive image solutions

[Roderick Aldrdge]

Jack Pivac wrote:
> While we're on the discussion of effective backup solutions, what 
> about using something like PartImage [1] (best ghost alternative I 
> could find) to create images of your disks/partitions.
> If you have a catastrophic disk failure just reclone another drive 
> from your backup image, and fill in any of the blanks with your latest 
> incremental backup. Will take slightly longer than a RAID 1 recovery, 
> but dont have the issues and additional cost that RAID brings.
>
> Any holes in my logic?
> Something better than PartImage?
mondo is billed as a disaster recovery suite. It is primarily an imaging 
program, but can be used for incremental and selective backups as well. 
I have used it successfully to do backups to CDs for my stand-alone home 
system. It might suit your requirements for both system image and data 
backup.

 From the Kubuntu installation description:

powerful disaster recovery suite
Mondo is reliable. It backs up your Debian GNU/Linux server or 
workstation to tape, CD-R, CD-RW, NFS or hard disk partition. In the 
event of catastrophic data loss, you will be able to restore all of your 
data [or as much as you want], from bare metal if necessary. Mondo is in 
use by numerous blue-chip enterprises and large organizations, dozens of 
smaller companies, and tens of thousands of users.
Mondo is comprehensive. Mondo supports LVM, RAID, ext2, ext3, JFS, XFS, 
ReiserFS, VFAT, and can support additional file systems easily. It 
supports adjustments in disk geometry, including migration from non-RAID 
to RAID. Mondo runs on all major Linux distributions and is getting 
better all the time. You may even use it to backup non-Linux partitions, 
such as NTFS.
Homepage: http://www.mondorescue.org

Rod