Re: [cobalt-users] RAID backups

[Kris Dahl <krislists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

on 7/17/00 8:06 PM, Paul Sherrard at psherrard@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> Anyone have any experience/advice with this?? I've got a bunch (50) RaQ3i's
> (second Ethernet port should make this easier, right?)  that we want to
> start backing up to a Terrabyte RAID..  suggestions on
> software/implementation GREATLY appreciated, either on the list or off..
> 
> I am a complete newbie when it comes to RAIDs.. all of a sudden we need one,
> and it's gotta be good.. *grin*..
> 
> "Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible."

I assume that you mean you have a huge RAID fileserver that you want to back
up the Raq's to.

What sort of methods does that server have to access the Raq's, or the Raq's
it?

I would just set up a cron job for each raq to FTP its backup every night or
whatever.

Honestly, I would write a little shell script that checks with the 'server'
to see if it 'wants' the backup of the particular raq.  Essentially the Raq
checks in ever x number of minutes to see if the file server wants the
backup.  That was you could theoretically have the same cron job on all the
Raqs, but are able to schedule it from the master machine.  That way you
could essentially stagger the backups from 11:30p - 5:30am or whatever.  If
you had it check in every 5 or so minutes (or 15, whatever) you could easy
'tell' a machine to do a backup right now.  Could be usefull.

Other than that you could set up SSH on all the machines and use something
like Rsync.  The 'server' would go out and syncronize /home/raq_34 with raq
34's filesystem.  That would save on bandwidth.

Additionally, for performance you are going to want to use that secondary
ethernet port--set it ip as a private network.  Get a decent managed switch
to plug those into.  I would get something like a pair of HP 4000ms with
Gigabit cards.  Then either get a Gigabit NIC to the fileserver that
connects to the two switches.  I would actually not go that route and
instead do like a Fast Ether-channel/Trunk.  Like get 4 10/100 NICs in the
fileserver, two to each of the switches.  That should give you some decent
thruput.

Anyway,
-k