Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Hosting Security and Technology : backup HD

[Lem0nHead]

hello

today I got a new secondary 40 GBs HD that I plan using for backup

my primary HD has 80 GBs (15 used) and is splitted in many partitions:
/usr, /boot, /tmp, /home, etc...

i know the main thing I should backup is the "/home" dir
but what else should I backup (backups will be done daily with rsync, not compressed of course) in order to, supposing I have a problem with primary HD, I just need to boot with the secondary HD?

i just require the minimum necessary (httpd, ftpd, pop/smtp, named)... cpanel is not needed

has anyone already done that?

thanks

[diginode]

Backing up your binaries is probably pointless if you aren't backup up the filesystem as an image. With modern hardware, it is more probable that the whole filesystem or disk burns all at once, rather than a single file. Even if you have corrupted executables, you can reinstall them easily through package management.

Just make sure you have all your data files backed up and the SQL exported frequently.

[Lem0nHead]

Originally posted by diginode
Backing up your binaries is probably pointless if you aren't backup up the filesystem as an image. With modern hardware, it is more probable that the whole filesystem or disk burns all at once, rather than a single file. Even if you have corrupted executables, you can reinstall them easily through package management.

Just make sure you have all your data files backed up and the SQL exported frequently.

i was thinking about something like installing a new linux distribution like Fedora (my primary drive has RHEL, but i don't know if it's allowed to copy it) and configuring the httpd server and so on
and then backing-up important data (DNS records, httpd info, /home, etc.)

if I have a problem in the primary drive, I can boot with the second one while the primary is not fixed

then restore the datas to the primary and be back to it...
so the second one would be used only in an emergency

[leight]

Definitely backup /etc and /usr/local/etc
These are likely places for at least 90% of your servers config files.

[diginode]

Ok, I see. It is probably best to go for a raid-1 setup, as it has automatic failover and you can swap boot disks. However, since your disk sizes are different, the booting won't work properly.