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cvgeeks · #1 25th July 2010, 16:25

I'm new to the linux world and I'm very apt at backing up other OS's and restoring them when needed to the way they were before a crash.

I am currently able to backup my sites by downloading the files to my pc from the server control panel however I am worried about my server and it's configuration. I have put in lots of time on my boxes and have many of them running various configurations. I have documented most of the configs incase they go down but that doesnt help me with ISPCONFIG as when it goes down I need to perform a complete reinstall.

Is there not a program that will ghost the drive of your linux box? and then simply append it to the image say every night or on a schedual? Like an incremental backup of sorts.

Everything I'm seeing is just backingup files but not applications, configurations etc. Seems to me there must be somthing like this for linux.

If you can point me in the right direction I would very much appreciate it and I would be able to sleep better at night.

Thanks in advance

cvgeeks · #2 25th July 2010, 17:31

Ok, did my own home work and for any other new guys/girls out there here is what I came up with so far for doing two different kinds of backups.
1. Cloning

2. File backup

The programs I found are free opensource apps so no worries.

Personally I like the Clonezilla SE (server edition) as it has multicasting support whereby you can backup multiple servers simultaneously. This method captures an image of the server and unlike Ghost it captures only the used sectors of the drive not the entire partition. (at least this is what I understand).

I will try to implement Clonezilla SE in my environment and see how easy it is to setup, configure, and use. I will also test crash a box and see how easy it is to recover the box in a real world environment to see if I can get ISPCONFIG back up and running the way it was before the crash.

If this does not work then I'll move on to something else. Unless a guru out there already knows about this and can chime in for us new people.
Are we or am I on the right path, is this a viable solution to use with ISPCONFIG? Is there a downside to using this over something else?

Any help would be appreciated and thanks in advance.