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Thread: Linux Disaster Recovery

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    Question Linux Disaster Recovery

    I have been tasked with working out a DR plan for the Red Hat servers at work. I was windering if there is any reason why you couldn't create a linux boot disk, then boot off it and mount a tape drive and do a full restore (incl operating system)?

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    I'd have thought that the way that linux apps are configured would lend itself quite well to some form of base level disk image then restoring files in. - restarting a few services later and you have a working server * fingers crossed !*
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    not being too "search police" -y , but a quick google for "redhat Disaster recovery"

    gives this link which might give you some really usefull pointers.

    http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...-recovery.html
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    Quote Originally Posted by gman1981 View Post
    I have been tasked with working out a DR plan for the Red Hat servers at work. I was windering if there is any reason why you couldn't create a linux boot disk, then boot off it and mount a tape drive and do a full restore (incl operating system)?
    entirely feasible. even easier is a USB hard disk (if you can get one big enough), as they're more reliable and a lot faster

    you should also have a documented plan on rebuilding your system from scratch though, just in case

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    Quote Originally Posted by gman1981 View Post
    I have been tasked with working out a DR plan for the Red Hat servers at work. I was windering if there is any reason why you couldn't create a linux boot disk, then boot off it and mount a tape drive and do a full restore (incl operating system)?
    That will work. It is not the most efficent use of space on your backup drive though. If your backup tapes have the same or bigger capacity than the hard drive in your server it will be fairly simple. You should do a dry run, to make shure the recovery CD supports your tape drive etc.

    After you have done your restore, you will need to run lilo (or grub-config) to re-create the boot block. You can't back that up, as it will contain pointers to the raw disc address of the kernel etc, which will obvously change when you copy all the files back.

    The other thing, is that DR plans usualy include plans for your server room burning down etc. If that happens, the replacement servers may be a different brand, so need different hardware support. They might be located somewhere else so need different network settings. You need to make sure that your restore will boot on different hardware, and still work, and that you know what to tweak to get the servers working if they are located somewhere different.

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    Agent of the System ikonia's Avatar
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    Ok - disk images are a pointless restore method in most cases these days

    This is due to

    a.) hardware differences to be restored to
    b.) mirrored OS disks

    for a redhat server your recovery method should be to take regular OS configuration snapshots to make kickstart style files. In the event of a failure or a server room burn down those files should be made available to the new hardware. The new hardware should be installed via cd/network using the kickstart profiles for that server then the data for the applicaions restored.
    It is Inevitable.....


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    on a related note, our next-gen infrastructure at work has an "install" cd, which installs a base OS from scratch, all required packages, all configs, and has things like detecting which other servers on the network are present or missing to determine what its own IP should be

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    Quote Originally Posted by ikonia View Post
    Ok - disk images are a pointless restore method in most cases these days

    This is due to

    a.) hardware differences to be restored to
    b.) mirrored OS disks
    This is an issue with windows, but with my experence it is much less of an issue with linux.

    I have on a number of ocasions, taken the primary hard drive out of a working system, and installed it in a new box with a completley different chipset. In general it works with only a few minor issues, graphics cards being the main problem. (Though when I did it recently with ubuntu it even coped with that).

    Unlike windows, a normal linux install includes device drivers for every bit of hardware that linux supports, so when you clone an install to new hardware, it usualy auto detects and sorts it out. Rember that with linux it is just 20kb or so for each device driver, not megabytes of bloat to go with it, so it is cheap to include everything.

    Quote Originally Posted by ikonia View Post
    for a redhat server your recovery method should be to take regular OS configuration snapshots to make kickstart style files. In the event of a failure or a server room burn down those files should be made available to the new hardware. The new hardware should be installed via cd/network using the kickstart profiles for that server then the data for the applicaions restored.
    There are tools avalable that will look at your current setup, and create a new install CD with all the defaults set to your current settings. Last time I checked they where distinctly beta in quality, but it may be worth investigating.

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    Agent of the System ikonia's Avatar
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    yes, you will probably get the OS to boot - but then have to do work chaning the configs, as you say graphics cards, network cards (eg the broadcom drivers for example) but it is a fair point that it will normally boot. However taking a disk out and wacking it into a new server for me personally isn't a DR solution, not for a proffesional business.

    The kickstart tools I meantioned will allow you to take a soft image of the OS
    so its just data recovery needed on the new box thats been freshy built.

    The new install CD tools you mention do exist and I've tried a few. Microlite Backup Edge being one of the main candidates.
    It is Inevitable.....


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