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Web server backup application


Nuv

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I would to like to make an application to backup webservers.I have few questions in my mind.Hope the gurus and people with any knowledge on this subject will enlighten me.

 

1. Will it be wise to backup the web server with Operating System and programs installed in it with their settings ? (Suppose the complete hard disk gets fried i will just click restore after replacing my hard disk and it will upload all the files from the backup server with OS,setting of Apache etc.)

 

2. What compression/decompression algorithm should i use for loss less compression ?

 

3. What encryption technique should i use ?

 

4. I would like to make it fast and use less resources. In which language should it be coded (C,python,php etc.)

 

5. I would like to run different process of the software (i.e encryption,compression etc.) seeing the system resources that are available and if less resources are being used only then they should start. How deep should be my knowledge on system programming ?

 

Any guidance/tutorials/suggestions are welcomed .

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To be perfectly honest this sounds like a task of system administration rather than application programming.  All the tools are available and open source for doing this on Linux, the BSDs and other unix OSs, it would just be a matter of configuring and possibly scripting them into a single management interface if its not done already.

 

Basic practice with backups are full backups weekly, with incremental backups on everyday not a full backup day, thats fairly conservative and changes depending how often data is changed and the value of the data.

 

Compression: zip/gzip or lzma are lossless and common.

 

Encryption: PKI using gnupg, make sure to have several backup copies of your private key.

 

Backup/Restore systems are complex and there are many methods from live to offline backups and a variety of different software.  Over the wire (network) restorations, which you alluded to are very costly in terms of time. You'll need a definitive strategy to work with and you'll probably have to change it to get the results you want.

 

I'd suggest digging into the research, tldp.org is a good place to start with this I think, learning what methodologies are out there now.  Don't be afraid of older documentation in the case of backups, it hasn't changed much with the exception stemmed from the popularization of virtualization.

 

http://tldp.org/REF/INTRO/Backup-INTRO/

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux-Complete-Backup-and-Recovery-HOWTO/

http://tldp.org/LDP/lame/LAME/linux-admin-made-easy/server-backup.html

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/snapshots_backup.html

 

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