[tsc-devel] Backuping alexandria

Quintus | Sat, 24 Jan 2015 18:26:34 UTC

Hi everyone,

first off: While I do skim through the chatlogs, I don’t read them in
detail. If you want me to recognise something, please send it to the ML.

I’ve seen you debating about TSC server backups. As outlined already,
this is something we should really do. Currently, if some unforeseen
outage happens, all data on our forums/wiki is just gone. That’s bad.

Backups are something that should be run automatically, maybe something
like once a week is enough for us. Every 6 month or so we could do a
full backup, with the weekly backups just being incremental backups
(i.e. backups of only the changes that happened). This will keep the
storage needed low. To give you an overview of what’s needed, here are
some figures:

Alexandria has a maximum disk size of 60 GiB, where 54 GiB are available
for storing files. Of these, 6,6 GiB are actually in use currently, and
this number will only slowly increment, mainly, when we upload new
release tarballs/installer files. Given that figures, I think that two
500 GiB hard drives (see below) are sufficient.

For doing regular backup, all that’s needed is a device that’s either
running all the time or that is woken up automatically at backup
time. Note that something as little as a Raspberry Pi is enough. It’s
more important that there’s enough disk space, and probably that the
data is stored on more than one disk to prevent disk failure. IPv4 NAT
generally doesn’t prevent creation of backups, because you can either
construct the backup in such a way that the backup machine opens an
outward connection to the server (which perfectly traverses NAT), or by
using IPv6, which always makes things easier. Go to
https://www.sixxs.net/ and get your free IPv6 tunnel and /64 net now if
your ISP doesn’t want to grant you IPv6.

What’s recommended, though, is a good Internet connection. Otherwise
making a backup will use up all your bandwidth for quite some time and
hindering your regular use of the network.

Valete,
Quintus

-- 
Blog: http://www.quintilianus.eu

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