Using rsync to backup server

Is there any way to backup the user accounts (databases and email addresses included) by rsync, as opposed to tarring and FTP'ing them, while still maintaining the ability to somewhat easily restore the accounts in case of server failure?

I have several 10+GB websites on this server, all of which have almost completely static file content. It seems pointless to tar every single one of those accounts and then transfer 30 GB worth of data every day for something that never changes.

Has anyone come up with a way to do this, or is there a way in directadmin that I'm just not seeing?

Is rsync able to do incremental backups of gzipped files? I didn't think that was possible.

The whole point of wanting to change from DA's normal method is that I don't see the point in transferring 50+GB for our backups when we could be transferring <1GB daily for the changes in files...

I think that with this way (if ever implemented) the restore procedure will be very time consuming.

massive said:

I think that with this way (if ever implemented) the restore procedure will be very time consuming.

Click to expand...

I don't think kcackler is writing about an incremental restore; I think he wants to use rsync to move data incrementally but save one backup on the destination system.

What I'd do is create a backup on the same DirectAdmin server, then use rsync to copy it to a backup server. That way after the first backup, only the changes would be transferred.

Once on the backup server I'd copy the backup at least weekly to a managed storage solution, so I could go back in time if necessary, if some corruption got copied over to the most recent backup.

Jeff

Jeff - Are you saying that I can use DA's built in mechanism to backup the accounts to, say /backup and then rsync that directory to the backup server and only the changes in the gzipped files will be transferred?

I thought rsync was only able to copy the changes, in say, a text file. I didn't know it could transfer the changes in gzipped files. Is it able to do that? If so, I'd say I've found the solution.

Sorry, I was away a few days at a coference.

I didn't even think of that issue . I've never done it and I don't know how much time/data transit the rsync of gzipped files will save.

I found this interesting article from back in 1999.

I'd recommend doing some searches yourself.

Jeff

Thanks for the link Jeff. That is an interesting approach, and much simpler than I would have thought to implement. I'm going to do some more searching on this.

Thanks again.