Re: Backing up entire disk

[fiaid@quasi-sane.com]

> Is it possible to back up and restore an entire disk?

What OS are we talking here?  Solaris is easy as crap, linux could be just 
as easy.  And how do you want to do this?  Are you looking for a hot 
backup in teh sense that the system is running or are you going to get a 
point in time backup or some sort of a cold backup?

> It seems to me like when the data was restored, that
> it would be overwriting the files of active processes,
> and I don't understand if that would be possible.

This should only come into play if you are running some sort of a database 
or a system that does active file writes or changes.  A webserver should 
be easy to backup as it is pretty static.  As remember that alot of thoe 
files for active processes are help in memory rather than on disk, or in 
the sense of swap they are there, but virtually.

> If the above is not possible, would this be possible?
> Make an identical second disk.  If the first disk
> is corrupted, just swap disks.

I did this all the time with Solaris,there is a cold spare script floating 
around on the web.  I'll try and find it and link it out here for you.  
But, we did this with all of our production machines and everytime the OS 
was updated or a significant change was made it was allowed a burn in 
period then would mirrored to the cold mirror.

http://www.blacksheepnetworks.com/security/resources/coldmirroring20010306.html

This is the script that we used for Solaris, but you can use it as a 
starting point to create something for use in linux or whatever OS you are 
in.

Tighe

-- 
Tighe Schlottog         workape         fiaid
"Nothing is too cruel if it is funny enough."


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