[SAC] Server Planning - Backups

[Alex Mandel]

All,

I'd like to collect some thoughts on standards and procedures for
backups to ensure we avoid some of the current issues that the backups
cause on our current services. It would also be good to know before we
create any virtual machines (may start next week).

1. In addition to normal backup mechanisms, we do have the option to try
snapshot backups of the virtual machines. This lets us make a live copy
of a running virtual machine in such a way that the image could easily
be restored later.

Now for some ideas,
1. We could mount the BackupVM in each of the virtual machines so that
when a cron script is run that dumps databases or hot copies sites it
writes to the backup server. This might prevent the I/O issues we
currently have.
2. We could offset the backup times so that fewer backup processes are
running on the same physical machine at the same time, and use a system
similar to the current setup.
3. We could look into setting up some type of corporate style backup
system controlled by the BackupVM(server-client),like zmanda, bacula,
backuppc etc. - This would also ensure avoidance of write conflicts to
the BackupVM.


Thoughts?

Thanks,
Alex