[NMLUG] backup storage trade

[deathandtaxes at caglan.net (Dan Parrish)]

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Jody Harris wrote:
| Dan Parrish wrote:
|
|> Any other thoughts on this issue?
|
|
| I keep coming back to redundancy and scalability.
|
| What if a router is down? Power failure?  Your power supply burns up?
| Your ISP burns down?  I'm not able to get to those files for X
| hours/days for recovery or updating.
|
| I'd like to trade you 2GB for 2GB on my system.  2GB swap with Mike,
| 2GB<> with Aaron.  2GB<> with Jerry.  2GB with Don.  etc, ad nasium
| (sp?).  Then, have a loopback device distribute those files across "my"
| network of drives in such a way that if one or two servers are not
| available, I can still retrieve all my files, and do an update.
|
| It gets pretty sticky at the point that a user "owns" the space.  The
| user (system running on the user's end) would be responsible for
| tracking files, distributing files, updating files, and resyncing any
| devices that "disappeared" at any time.
|
| ....
|
| come to think of it, the only thing we have to agree on is 1) that we
| trade drive space, and 2) a key system for encryption.  If I want to do
| the distributed/redundant junk, that should be my problem -- you really
| don't care what I put on your system (as long as I don't get you into
| trouble).
|
| So, I guess it boils down to that, and some kind of bandwidth quota
| option.  I'm sure Aaron wouldn't be impressed if I traded him 2GB of
| drive space, and ate up all of his bandwidth....
|
| Breaking it down into layers makes it easier to start working on.
|
| j

I think if you keep a local backup and a single remote, then you're
pretty safe.  If my ISP burns down, you still got your local copy.  If
you lose your local copy, I got a copy over here.  Sure, the powers that
be could really have a hard-on for you and burn both your house and my
ISP, then you'd be hosed, but that's pretty low-risk.

What I do for my own private use is I have a remote backup server that's
running raid1 (mirroring).  Even if one of those HDs dies, I still got a
copy on the other HD.  I also keep local copies in my house.  I managed
to munge my system enough that I actually had to retrieve my system from
backup once (just backed up the vitals in /var and /etc and just
re-emerged my system).

The only remaining issue is the viewability of my files on your system.
~ I won't be uploading anything illegal, just my backup config files, but
of course many of those files will have vital information integral to my
system's security.  For instance, if I backup some phpnuke websites to
your box, you can look in phpnuke's config.php and get a valid mysql
user/pass...Of course I only gave permissions to that
mysqluser@localhost, but still...

So, if we can figure out how to encrypt the files on the remote machine
such that root@remote_machine can't view the files then we're in
business and I'll gladly hop on with any of you guys in a backup scheme.
~ :-)

- -Dan
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