PUBLIC MARKS with tags backup & remote

# Performing remote backups of VMs created with xen-create-image tool (xen-tools). # Use rdiff-backup as backend.

If you're using LVM based storage for your domains this script will create a snapshot and backup each server to a local drive or a remote system using rdiff-backup.

rdiff-backup backs up one directory to another, possibly over a network. The target directory ends up a copy of the source directory, but extra reverse diffs are stored in a special subdirectory of that target directory, so you can still recover files lost some time ago. The idea is to combine the best features of a mirror and an incremental backup. rdiff-backup also preserves subdirectories, hard links, dev files, permissions, uid/gid ownership, modification times, extended attributes, acls, and resource forks. Also, rdiff-backup can operate in a bandwidth efficient manner over a pipe, like rsync. Thus you can use rdiff-backup and ssh to securely back a hard drive up to a remote location, and only the differences will be transmitted. Finally, rdiff-backup is easy to use and settings have sensical defaults.

Backup a data server from a backup server using rsync. Automate the backup to have a daily backup and purge the number of backups. Oh yes, this is “How I did it” on a Debian data server