Backing up Servers

[fos]

Best server backup strategy, any thoughts?

While it is easy to restore the operating system and even the various applications that may be on a server, what are the essential directories and files that should be saved to restore the users accounts after a catastrophic server crash?

/home
/etc
/var/www
A mysqlhotcopy of each database
/var/lib/mysql support files

anything else?

What about a personal desktop system?

fos....

[jpaulb]

I backup /var, /etc, /home, /usr/local, If /var/lib/dpkg is backed up you can access the list of installed packages and use dpkg --set-selections install these.

Paul

[danieldk]

While it is easy to restore the operating system and even the various applications that may be on a server, what are the essential directories and files that should be saved to restore the users accounts after a catastrophic server crash?

Also, this kinda depends on the definition of 'catastropic server crash'. If you mean a configuration error, bad upgrade, etc.: you can make snapshots with LVM that you can revert to. RAID-1 can protect well against faulty disks.

Of course, it's good to have off-site backups as well.

[fos]

I have offsite backup with rsync.net. So far they have been quite good. They have backup to multiple geographic locations for a reasonable fee. I am backing up the two servers I manage as well as my home computers.

Now that Comcast has taken over from Time-Warner in my area, upload speed sucks!! Download speed is good but they are seriously throttling the uploads. After about 39 seconds it drops to less than dial up rate.

Thanks for all of the tips.

fos