Offline copy/vaulting backup data

Server
1

Hi there. I’m using urBackup for a while now in my home network. Laptops, Desktops, mix of Linux and Windows clients.
What I would like to add is a regular copy of my server (backup) data to an external HDD, in order to keep it offline in a separate location. I don’t necessarily have an internet connection to another server in another datacenter or anything like that, so I know I could lose some of the more recent data in this scenario. I’m thinking weekly or monthly copy to be stored away somewhere.

My question is: what do I need to backup on the server in order to be protected (against theft, fire, flood or other disaster) from the loss of my server and clients. I want to be able to source a new machine, install urBackup on it, and restore my backup data so that I then can restore all of my clients. Does that make sense?

2

You can install urbackup client on the existing urbackup server and take backup of the entire storage repo to USB disk.
In case of disaster, u can install urbackup server software and restore the urbackup database to get back your urbackup setup running.

3

Hey that looks like an interesting idea. I had not thought about using urBackup itself for doing the copy. Obviously I need to configure that client’s backup data to be written on the USB disk and not on the internal disk of the server (otherwise, obvious recursive loop in data copy). I’m not good enough with urBackup to know how to do that but I’m going to research that possibility…
Thanks

4

u need to have another urbackup server to do this.
ur existing urbackup server will also be urbackup client.
have one more urbackup server and connect the USB disk to that and configure the backup.

5

Yes agreed. In the meantime I did find out that all backup data must reside on a single file system and so I was already thinking of installing a second server as you mention. I just need to make sure that the client also backs up the database from the 1st server together with the “backup storage path”. Not sure where the database lives on the server and I’ve no access right now but I’ll check that later.

8.1.1 Backup storage path
The backup storage path is where all backup data is saved. To function properly all of this directories’ content must lie on the same file system (otherwise hard links cannot be created).

Thanks again for the idea!

6

by default urbackup backup’s its database during the maintenance window.
On What platform u r running ur current urbackup server.

7

The server is on Linux (Ubuntu) right now…

8

u can access the current urbackup repo and u should be able to find “urbackup” folder. Thats the urbackup database folder which is backed up.

9

All relevant stuff is in the backup folder. Per default it backs up the database to a sub-folder named urbackup nightly.

So you’d want to replicate the backup storage. I always recommend block level replication there. On Linux you have a few options… e.g. create LVM snapshots and dd them, put them into a RAID1 with mdraid and remove one disk, use ZFS and send/receive, etc…

10

That would be pretty good as well, and avoid copying the entire backup folder through the LAN. A script and a cron job would do the trick.