Introduction

Backup and recovery is essential. Failure to have verified backup and recovery procedures puts your data at risk of loss. Users often only learn this lesson after critical information they require is permanently lost. Attempting to recover from such data loss can be both time consuming and extremely difficult. So learn from others mistakes, and ensure beforehand that you have a system in place that protects your data and suits your needs.

Before deciding on a backup and recovery strategy you have to ask the following questions:

• Why? - Why are protecting yourself against disaster? Does it matter if you loose data? What loses will you suffer ($$$)?

• What? - What are you going to backup? Your entire hard drive or just some of the data?

• When? - When is the best time to backup your system? How often will you perform a backup? When will you use full backups and incremental backups.

• Where? - Where will the backups be stored? On-site? Off-Site? Cloud?

• Medium? - Attached storage (usb stick, usb hard drive, tape drive), backup server?

Backup

Types of Backup

There are many methods to provide backup and recovery; choosing the best process for you or your business will have to take several factors in to account.

• Recovery time objective (RTO): How fast should data be recovered? Can you continue to operate if data recovery is not recovered for a day, a week, etc?

• Recovery point objective (RPO): How much data can be lost. Can you lose two hours, two days or two weeks of data?

example: if you can withstand losing one week of data then a weekly backup would be sufficient, but if you can only withstand losing one day then you would need to employ a nightly backup (or a variation)

This document will cover three basic types of backup; Full, Incremental and Differential.

Full A full backup backs up all the files in the back up target.

Incremental An incremental backup backs up all the files that have changed since the last backup.

Differential A differential backup is the same as an incremental except if Windows files systems are involved. In that case it is a backup that does not clear the archive bit.

Backup Methods

Depending on your budget and specific RTO and RPO you can choose from manual, local automated or remote local.

• manual - manual backup would be initiated on a schedule by the user and is the most common method for home users to backup their files. This method is also the least reliable.

• local automated - automated backups that target a hard drive or tape drive attached to the physical box being backed up fall in to this category. Advanced home users and small businesses will often use this method.

• remote automated - automated backups that target a hard drive, tape drive or virtual tape library (VTL) over the network fall in to this backup. This type of backup is often used by businesses that have money they can dedicate to the process of backup. As the organization becomes more mature they may even stage the backup on multiple mediums and increase the distance between backup and production systems.

Recovery

note: many people consider only the backup part of this process and do nothing to verify that the backup can be restored. It is very important to test that your back process is working and that data can be recovered.

It is crucial that your backups be tested by restoring from them. Here are some tests you should do to ensure you can recover from a disaster:

• Restore many single files
• Restore an older version of a file
• Restore an entire folder
• Restore an entire drive and compare the checksum

If you do not test you may find out that nothing was being backed up when you need to restore the files in reality.

Backup Programs

Backup From a Graphical User Interface

GUIs offer a graphical interface from which a user can choose from a limited selection of options to customize operation. There are also usually configured defaults and guides that help in selecting the right options. There are a few to choose from, below you'll find several good choices that work well.

• Simple Backup Suite - For a thorough guide to installation and general use, please see SimpleBackupSuite.

• grsync - For more information see the rsync page.

• pybackpack - Here's a German page about pybackpack: http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/pybackpack

Backup From the Command Line

CLI's primary advantage over a GUI is that it exposes directly to you many more options. With that however comes the obligation of knowing exactly before hand what you want to do. There are no defaults with commands it's entirely up to the user to set the desired options. To better acquaint yourself beforehand, it is advisable that you read UsingTheTerminal.

• Creating an Archive - A full explanation of this command, including how to backup, restore and how to operate over a network among other things can be found at BackupYourSystem/TAR.

• rsync - For a full explanation, there is a separate page about rsync. As a companion, the article on SSH is worthwhile reading for those wanting to backup over a network.

• dump/restore - A good amount of information on its operation is located within its man page, available the usual way or online.

Backup Destination on a Remote Machine

• Simple Backup Suite - SimpleBackupSuite

• Duplicity - DuplicityBackupHowto

• BackupPC - BackupPC

Alternatives

Early Stage Ideas

In addition to that already discussed, there are projects still in development that you may wish to keep appraised of or even participate in.

• ContinuousBackups

• HomeUserBackup

• MigrateAndBackup

• BackupOfPackageUserData

• UbuntuDownUnder/BOFs/SimpleBackupSolution

• SessionBackup

Related Links

You might also want to check out these backup programs which will help you to make automated backups of your system:

• TimeVault.

• FlyBack.

• Back In Time.

• Amanda.

• Mondo Rescue.

• rsnapshot.

• Bacula.

• storeBackup -- it has unique features.

CategoryBackupRecovery CategoryCommandLine