Disk cloning

[Paniraja_KM at Dell.com]

Hi
Cloning using dd is not a good option if the disk size is huge. This
will take lot of time for completion.

Its better to use 
 tar cvfz - * |ssh <user_name at server_name> tar xvfz \-


Thanks
Pani

-----Original Message-----
From: linux-poweredge-bounces at dell.com
[mailto:linux-poweredge-bounces at dell.com] On Behalf Of Dimitri Yioulos
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2009 4:28 PM
To: linux-poweredge-Lists
Subject: Disk cloning

Hello to all.

I hope it's OK to ask the following:

I've been asked by a company to remotely clone a working system. It's
colo'd in Virginia (company HQ is in New York, I'm in Massachusetts).
Physical access to the box, a PE 2950, I believe, is via "Remote Hands"
only - colo personnel can do minor things, including disk swaps.  Down
time is really not an option.

I've considered all of the various cloning tools, and it seems to me
that dd and rsync are best-suited to the task.  It looks like "dd
if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=4096 conv=notrunc,noerror" will accomplish
the cloning (sda and sdb are of the same make, model, and size).

My questions:

1.  Is the above dd command correct?
2.  After cloning, must sdb be disconnected so as not to cause booting
problems?
3.  Do I have to do anything post-cloning to make sdb bootable?
4.  What rsync command would I use to keep the two disks synced?

If anyone has gone through this process, and can provide guidance, I'd
appreciate it.

TIA.

Dimitri

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