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So just getting started with business 7.3 and getting it setup for a school district. The one thing I didn't think I needed to really check on was a backup solution. Usually there's vendors pounding down your door trying to sell backup software for servers, but I can't find anything for clearOS that can be really verified. There's the bare metal backup. But you can't restore individual files if something gets deleted. There's the remote backup but when you have 200+gb of data, that's not an option. I'd love to be able to backup to a nas, removable drive, heck I'd even be ok with backing up to a workstation, but I want something that will create daily, monthly, etc backups and keep track of them automatically. Doesn't seem like too much to ask! I figured if they sell a business version, they must have a disaster recovery option. I can't even find anything about what the bare metal restore process is! Do you reload the os? Then do a restore from the bare metal backup?
In Backup
Friday, July 21 2017, 01:36 AM
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  • Accepted Answer

    Friday, July 21 2017, 12:36 PM - #Permalink
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    Not sure how it will fit your requirements but have a look at the Backup PC module, there is documentation on how to set it up for backing itself up.

    https://www1.clearos.com/marketplace/system/BackupPC#marketplace
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    Friday, July 21 2017, 07:30 PM - #Permalink
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    David Adam's recommendation is for backup up desktops to the server.

    I think you're looking for backing up the server itself. In this case, if you don't like any of the solutions in the Marketplace (eg. Remote Backup, Bare Metal Backup etc.), know that you are not confined to what ClearOS has in the Marketplace.

    Being binary compatible with CentOS/RHEL has it's advantages...huge advantages. Any software (and howto) you can find is almost certainly translatable to ClearOS - as long as the software can be run in 'headless' mode.

    One great example in the backup space I've used with success is SpiderOAK One, especially with their 'LAN Sync' feature.

    Could be just what you're looking for. Runs headless just fine, and you can use the SpiderOAK One client for any PC (Windows, Mac, Linux) to configure, backup, restore (one or all) from any device you have.

    Though I sound like it, I am not affiliated with SpiderOAK.

    There are a tonne of options for backup in the CentOS/Linux world...from something as simple as rsync and bash scripting to AFFA and on up to the Enterprise level, like Bacula.

    Ben
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    Friday, July 21 2017, 09:54 PM - #Permalink
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    Thanks for the recommendations. I did download backupPC but couldn't figure out how to backup itself, I'll have to look again. I'll also look at spideroak and see how that looks. I see it's cloud based and pretty reasonable for the charge for space.
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    Friday, July 21 2017, 11:27 PM - #Permalink
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    What about if I could find a win 7 backup program, that can also backup linux stations? What would I look for to make sure it's compatible with clearOS? CentOS? (sorry, this is all new to me, so my terminology may not be correct)
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    Monday, July 24 2017, 05:35 PM - #Permalink
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    So far I'm not coming up with much, but I do have another question. When using bare metal backup, it creates three files on the usb drive. One for home, flexshare and the config. Is there a way to access these files and copy them with winscp? I wouldn't mind using the bare metal backup if I could also take those backup files and copy them to off site storage, which I could do with scripting in winscp, but I can't find the backup files on the usb drive. Any suggestions?
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    Monday, July 24 2017, 10:07 PM - #Permalink
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    How about Veeam software? Anyone used it before as a backup? They have a free linux version, but of course I have no idea if it would work or not, and I'm not real keen on getting into the command line stuff. Here's the instruction sheet, see if it looks like it might work?
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  • Accepted Answer

    Wednesday, July 26 2017, 04:33 AM - #Permalink
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    Hi Jeff,

    We use a variety of backup solutions with our clients. ClearCenters cloud backup is great for clients with small data requirements, but some of our clients have TB's of data, so commercially this is just a none starter. For these situations we generally set up a remote linux backup server, create SSL trust between the servers , and have cron execute a shell script to rsync via SSH from the ClearOS server across to the backup. On the backup server we use an opensouce and free program called Backintime, which creates timed snapshots, giving us multiple restore points. Typically we backup every three hours, so every backup is retained for 5 days, then one backup per day retained for 30 days, one backup per week retained for 13 weeks, and one backup per month is retained for 24 months, but you can configure this to suite. Snapshots are browsable so it's easy to pick individual files for restore.

    Backintime is based on rsync, and uses hardlinks so that although every snapshot appears as a complete backup, in reality unchanged files are only stored once and only new or changed files are added in new snapshots so it's quite efficient. However, in our case, because we initially rsync from the ClearOS server to the backup server and then let Backintime work from the result of the rsync, we do create an immediate doubling of the data size on the backup server, but disk are cheap these days so this hasn't been an issue even allowing that we mirror or raid10 the data drives on the backup server.

    If this sounds like it'll work for you, and you need any help, feel free to ask.

    Cheers...... Andy
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  • Accepted Answer

    Thursday, July 27 2017, 07:15 PM - #Permalink
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    Thanks Andrew for the suggestion. I think it might be overkill for this situation. I guess I'm just going to keep it simple and create a batch file in windows that creates a folder on a backup NAS device. Right now it determines if it's the first of the month, if so it creates a folder in the "Monthly" folder of today's date, calls WinSCP and copies everything from the users home directories, the flexshares, and the configuration files created from the backup program in clearOS. Otherwise it creates a folder in the "Daily" folder with today's date and copies it there. I'll figure a way to groom out the old ones later. It's a simple copy, so if the school principal needs to locate an older file, all he has to do is browse the backup drive, find it, and drag it to his system. No decompressing or restoring programs to figure out. I know it's not the most efficient, but they only have about 100gb of data, and they already have a raid 5 NAS with 4TB of space. (previous consultant told them they needed that). I've encountered so many backup systems in the past that previous consultants setup that are so complicated, and nobody ever knows if they are working or not. The previous consultant sold them the NAS Raid 5 and setup backup exec for the windows server. They were charging the school every month to remote in and check that it was backing up. When the time came they needed a folder restored....low and behold...it hadn't been backing up in months. Just kept charging them every month....Gotta love it!
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  • Accepted Answer

    Thursday, July 27 2017, 07:16 PM - #Permalink
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    Thanks Andrew for the suggestion. I think it might be overkill for this situation. I guess I'm just going to keep it simple and create a batch file in windows that creates a folder on a backup NAS device. Right now it determines if it's the first of the month, if so it creates a folder in the "Monthly" folder of today's date, calls WinSCP and copies everything from the users home directories, the flexshares, and the configuration files created from the backup program in clearOS. Otherwise it creates a folder in the "Daily" folder with today's date and copies it there. I'll figure a way to groom out the old ones later. It's a simple copy, so if the school principal needs to locate an older file, all he has to do is browse the backup drive, find it, and drag it to his system. No decompressing or restoring programs to figure out. I know it's not the most efficient, but they only have about 100gb of data, and they already have a raid 5 NAS with 4TB of space. (previous consultant told them they needed that). I've encountered so many backup systems in the past that previous consultants setup that are so complicated, and nobody ever knows if they are working or not. The previous consultant sold them the NAS Raid 5 and setup backup exec for the windows server. They were charging the school every month to remote in and check that it was backing up. When the time came they needed a folder restored....low and behold...it hadn't been backing up in months. Just kept charging them every month....Gotta love it! I tried to upload the backup.bat file I was using, but it says it's an unsupported format...Sorry!
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  • Accepted Answer

    Thursday, July 27 2017, 11:18 PM - #Permalink
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    One strategy using Backup PC is to backup another server using Backup PC. In this paradigm you have one onsite server that manages backup and little else. From there you can backup PCs as the name would imply but you can also backup your ClearOS and other servers. I've even seen deployments where they uses VSS and LVM snapshots to do quite sophisticated backups using Backup PC.
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  • Accepted Answer

    Monday, August 14 2017, 11:18 AM - #Permalink
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    Andrew Bostock-Lawton wrote:

    Hi Jeff,

    If this sounds like it'll work for you, and you need any help, feel free to ask.

    Cheers...... Andy


    Andy

    I'm liking what I see but can't work out how to install.

    Is there an easy way to install on ClearOS?
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  • Accepted Answer

    Sunday, December 03 2017, 10:19 PM - #Permalink
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    Dave Loper wrote:

    One strategy using Backup PC is to backup another server using Backup PC. In this paradigm you have one onsite server that manages backup and little else. From there you can backup PCs as the name would imply but you can also backup your ClearOS and other servers. I've even seen deployments where they uses VSS and LVM snapshots to do quite sophisticated backups using Backup PC.


    Dave, I recently removed the old server from the school and found it's not actually as dated as I had thought, so now I'm thinking of using your method of backup by loading clearos and backup pc on the old server, and can backup pc's on the network, but also the main server. Is that correct? So would I just load up the community os edition on the server, add backup pc and would be able to see the main server? What would be backed up?

    Thanks,
    Jeff
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