A general rsync question -> bare-metal restore

[Michael Scully]

Bogart:

	I install Dell Linux systems at commercial sites where the cost
isn't the issue.  I use a commercial product called LoneTar, that is a full
set of backup management utilities, as well as a crash recovery system.
LoneTar copies and does a verification pass on everything, including links
and device nodes.  It also produces a crash recovery ISO you burn to CD for
bare metal recovery.  Boot from it, put in the last good tape (or external
drive with the backup file), walk away and let it do everything from
scratch.

	The pending release will also do remote FTP backup over an SSH
tunnel for security.

	It's $299, but with a year's telephone support for 24x7 crash
recovery assistance.  For a professional business server, that's an
insignificant amount to spend.  You can download a 30 day trial from
www.lonetar.com.

Scully


-----Original Message-----
From: linux-poweredge-bounces at dell.com
[mailto:linux-poweredge-bounces at dell.com] On Behalf Of Bogart Salzberg
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2007 10:19 AM
To: linux-poweredge at dell.com
Subject: Re: A general rsync question -> bare-metal restore

Thanks, Jim.

I am planning to pull the daily snapshot from the data center to my  
office with rsync (via dirvish). The USB drive would be hooked up to  
my development box here in the office. Then if I ever needed a bare- 
metal restore I could use a Mondo DVD for the OS and then mount the  
USB drive to restore files. The SC1435's at the data center have DVD- 
ROM and USB 2.0 standard.

I was also vaguely considering mirroring the whole 250GB to a spare  
hard drive at the office. Then I could just drop it in to restore.  
The challenge would be ensuring the mirror remains in a known-good  
state. Also it would take two hours to re-sync the RAID, which  
doesn't offer a compelling advantage time-wise.

Anybody else have any brilliant ideas for bare-metal restore?

Bogart