off-site backup plan

[Alex Dean]

On Oct 21, 2009, at 12:11 PM, Matt Graham wrote:

> From: "Dorian Monroe" <dorian.monroe at cox.net>
>> I don't understand how anyone could consider RAID a "backup" plan.
>> 'Cause it's not.

You may be misunderstanding my architecture.  The system in question  
exists to make backups of other systems.  I'm not using RAID as a  
backup plan.  I'm using rdiff-backup as a backup plan.  :)  RAID is to  
provide redundancy on the backup server.

>
> RAID-1 with a hot spare, where you periodically deactivate the spare,
> then slap a new spare in, then take the old spare and put it
> somewhere else, could be used as a backup.  I believe they were
> referring to that method, since Alex said he was thinking about
> doing that in the message that started this thread.

Indeed, that was my original plan.

I'm still reading around trying to figure out if I can get hot- 
plugging SATA or eSATA.  If I can get confident that that will work, I  
will probably go that route.  Otherwise, USB will be the fallback plan.

I'm having a hard time researching disk controllers (especially those  
integrated w/ motherboards).  Is an eSATA port really different from a  
SATA port?  Some info I've found states they are distinct, and you  
need an eSATA port to do hot-plugging.  Other people have reported  
getting hot-plug with a normal SATA port, but I'm not sure whether  
that's because they're correct, or whether they're just lucky so far  
and will eventually fry their disks or panic their kernel.  It's all  
quite confusing for a lowly programmer who doesn't do much hardware  
kludgery.

>
> FWIW, the every-week connect+rsync of a USB2 drive and ~120G of data
> approach that I'm using takes about 5 minutes wall-clock and 30
> seconds of plugging/unplugging and typing 2 commands.

Hot-plug in USB is a much more well-known proposition.  Decent  
fallback plan if the SATA stuff finally gets the best of me.

thanks,
alex
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