response 8 of 16:

Mar 7 18:54 UTC 2007

Might I gripe a bit just randomly logging in here..

Looking at grex, it appears there are 4 drives attached
to the system, 3 being scsi at one ata.  (I may be missing some, but
if you don't mind, just stick with me..)

The scsi storage appears to be 2x18G and 1x36G, and ~40G of some IDE disk.

For backups and data storage, a 250g disk can be had for around $63 or so
(including shipping).  Find some old PC to put it in with an ethernet card
(i can donate one) and you can set up a cron job to rsync several full
copies/snapshots of grex a day based on the current utilization.  this
would give a possible 'live image' that could be brought up in the case
of a major disaster.  Finding an old(er) PC to put the disk(s) in as well
as getting it up and running would be cheaper in the long term than a
dvd writer plus media.  I'm not sure what quantity of space we have
at provide.net, but such a machine could be connected with a cross
over cable or similar dedicated backup media.  I've found that having
something like this that can be automated (and reduce the need for what
appears to be a resource/time constrained staff) will also provide
fairly predictable results over the long term.

While this does mean using a "cheap" ata disk that is also "slow" and
has all sorts of other possibly undesirable effects, I firmly believe
that the positives from this type of a setup are significant and will
represent an efficent use of the resources that grex has over time.
Using a pair of GE cards for this would allow a speed of about 125MB/s,
much faster than the 100MB/s a cheap ata-100 disk will allow.  This will
also be much faster than the speed typically seen from a DVD drive
which is much slower, typically around 16MB/s for a 12-speed dvd reader.
for comparison sake, dvd-rw gives ~3MB/s write at 2x, and dvd-r gives
about 5.5MB/s for a 4x writer.

I think automation and the reduction in requiring a dedicated staff member
to 'change discs' is well worth the minor additional investment over the $200
that was approved for the dvd burner.

response 10 of 16:

Mar 7 20:20 UTC 2007

I think the DVD-RW could work if we took a moment to think about what we
should and should not back up. I don't think user home directories need
to be backed up. Those should be the user's responsibility. Further, I
don't think we need to make backups of non-customized software that we
simply installed from the ports system. The question becomes "what is
left over", and is it more than 4.7GB?

response 12 of 16:

Mar 10 13:55 UTC 2007

re #10
I'm not saying that a dvd-rw won't work, it'll just be slow and
require physical interaction with the system.  setting up something
where you can automate it and is also "cheap" I think is an ideal
solution.
re #11
nice to see you around too.  btw if there are space constraints at
provide.net, an incremental rsync across the network to someplace
else may also be valuable.  there's creative ways to make something
like that work..  a rsync or similar could be set up to go to
some staffers home that housed a machine that was dedicated for
backups.

response 14 of 16:

Mar 26 10:34 UTC 2007

True, I rsync backup some client machines at my home.  It doesn't bother
my network connection or theirs.

I suspect it would be a problem at Provide.Net, but if it wasn't, we
could get a good newish system located there that could be a SPAM
clearinghouse, and also rsync backup.  Even with Grex's supposedly
*huge* mail load I'm sure this could be made to work.  I'm doing this on
some truly pathetic old hardware for myself.  Stats for this are here:
http://mynet.whitehat-inc.com/spam.php

response 16 of 16:

Apr 11 07:34 UTC 2007

Is that the meeting numbered by Sun patches?