Hi guys,

I was wondering if anyone of you have any experience imaging the whole server. I think it will be really convenient if I can have an image to restore from in case it hits the fan.

http://www.bacula.com/html-manual/rescue.html#emergency


Take a look at the 'Rescue CD' option. You can burn a live copy of your system to a CD and then use it to restore the server back if it crashes.

You can run it remotely and download the ISO image it creates to your local system to burn also to keep a offsite copy.

Jeremy

Jeremy, It seems like I need physical access to the server for the initial install, a luxury that I do not have unfortunately.

Since my server is on LT network, I am just wondering if you guys can install it on my behalf for a fee?

Roy you would only need local console access if you had to restore the system. If you just wanted to make backups then you can do all of that remotely by creating the rescue CD.

If you had a hardware failure and had that disk prepared with us we could work out an arrangement to restore the data for you on a new set of drives. If you had the ISO on a remote location with broadband Internet connectivity the file could also be transferred and then burned and used for restoration.

Jeremy

Awesome, Jeremy.
I am not really looking forward to the day that I hand you guys my image file though. :)

Anyway I thought that Acronis True Image Server 8.0 for Linux is the only imaging application for Linux.
Any of you guys heard of it?

Roy,

Norton Ghost will create drive images.

It does support images over LAN but you will need to install the software on the server which will require some assistance from your hosting provider as it re-boots into a pseudo DOS mode to perform the imaging.

K.

I was wondering if anyone of you have any experience imaging the whole server. I think it will be really convenient if I can have an image to restore from in case it hits the fan.

I set up an rsync server, then backup all files to my machines at home.
It's setup to run automatically everyday.

So in theory, in the event of disaster, I just asked the hoster to do a standard server install, then copy the files from this backup, and everything should be fine.

Well, haven't got a chance to test it though (and definitely NOT looking forward to it :) )


regards,
Harry

We use DAR dar.linux.free.fr and have found it to work wonders. It uses simple ftp transfer to do monthly full backups, weeklyand daily differientials of the entire drive if needed.