Server Backup Question

L

linger

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 18, 2004
Messages
290
So i have a server running debian etch and i have 6 drives running in raid-1 on a raid card with a single 80gb WD main hard drive. The data on the raid-1 drives is backed up onto external hard drives, but the main drive has no sort of backup or redundancy. What i want to know is that if i loose the main drive will i be able to eventually access the data that is spread across the six storage drives with LVM, or will i never be able to access it again because the lvm storage information is stored on the main drive? Also i would like to know of any suggestions for backing up the main drive & how often i might need to do it.
Thanks in advance
Jimmy
 
IIRC, I've tested this to work the way you want: plug the array into another machine (with the drives in any order, and connected to any controller that Linux supports) and the array shows up.

Unless you've got a lot of custom configuration going on, I'd suggest it's not worth your time to back up the boot disk. Your home directory, maybe; schedule a cron job to copy or compress it onto the main array and let it get backed up with everything else. Generally, though, you should be able to separate your OS from your configuration and just back up the configuration.

If you're like me, you install packages as you think of them, and when you reinstall the system there's a frustrating month while you install the stuff you forgot you use. A list like "dpkg --get-selections" generates may come in handy.
 
Ah, this is good news... I was kind of worried that i would loose all the data on my drives if the boot drive failed because the lvm configuration would have been stored on their.Thanks for the info, this makes me feel much better.
Also i'll have to look into this dpkg --get-selections because i too know the frustration of trying to figure out what packages i need to reinstall.
Thanks again
Jimmy
 
You might give it a try and verify that it works with your configuration. A livecd would probably have the necessary modules to load your raid configuration, and you might as well make sure it works before your thesis is due, your house is on fire, and you have to get it printed before the machine burns up (that being the thing that normally happens when you take things for granted :p).
 
unhappy_mage said:
You might give it a try and verify that it works with your configuration. A livecd would probably have the necessary modules to load your raid configuration, and you might as well make sure it works before your thesis is due, your house is on fire, and you have to get it printed before the machine burns up (that being the thing that normally happens when you take things for granted :p).
Click to expand...

I definitely agree with testing things to make sure, but do you think it would be possible to test it by unplugging the os drive and then booting into a live cd and check if i could see the data?
 
Sure, just don't format anything :p Check out the documentation an partitioning during install and adapt it to your situation. Don't make any changes, but you should be safe booting into the installer and viewing the MD configuration. If you see the partition, you can almost certainly get it mounted. "mdadm --assemble" may be necessary.

Are you using LVM? That's a whole 'nother can of worms, and I don't have much experience with it.
 
yay i'm using lvm with a raid card so the three drives that my os sees and has added to the lvm are actually 6 drives in raid1 so i don't have anything to do with MD & mdadm
 
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