Disk Backups

Equipment and Schedule

We use our backup system for regular backups of all major server filesystems. The system consists of

1. a daily disk-to-disk backup based on rsnapshot, which can be accessed by users to reconstruct accidently erased or modified files
2. a weekly tape backup to an Overland NEO-2000 tape library with 30 slots and one LTO-3 drive (400GB/tape uncompressed)

Excluding Directories from Backups

For some of your data it might be reasonable to exclude it from the regular backup, e.g., in case of directories that contain your personal backups of your notebook's filesystems, for which we don't want to keep "backups of backups". Another example are huge directories containing music or video files that don't have to be backed up. To save space and time for those directories, you can exclude them explicitly from the backup by creating a file named "$HOME/.backupexcludes". This file may contain a list of relative directories (one per line) to be excluded from the backup, an example:

Pictures
Music/*    

This excludes the directory Pictures with all its contents, and all contents of the directory Music (but not the directory Music itself).

When Shit Happened

Backups are useful not only to restore filesystems of crashed disks, but also to restore single files or directories that were accidentally removed or modifies by a user. In these situations, you may seek the directory /ibr/backup for older versions of the missed file. On the first level, you'll find the backup instance, named daily.n or weekly.n. Look at the modification dates of these directories to find out when the backup has been created. The second level represents the hosts being backed up, and finally within these directories you'll find the hosts' original directory structure. Note that these hierarchies may not be what you are used to see through the use of automounter paths. Most stuff can be found in lvm/, e.g. HOME directories reside in salvator/lvm/home.