[Mageia-sysadm] Backups

Mon Nov 15 18:35:20 CET 2010

Hi ( again ),
+
+While doing some unrelated work, I have see that we do not have a backup
+strategy at the moment. 
+
+While a server is planned to be setup for this ( fiona ), we do not have
+it at the moment ( as this requires money, that requires a bank account,
+that requires feedback from french administration ).
+
+So, in order to decide, we need to know :
+- what do we backup ?
+  - ldap
+  - sql dump of the database
+  - svn dump ( which will lead to my next mail )
+  - /etc/ /usr/local/, in case someone forget to add something to puppet
+  - CA certificate, once we will have them
+  - gpg keys, once we have them
+  - logs, as required by french laws ( 1 year of logs, no precision
+about the amount of data in it ). My own experience with law enforcement
+agency showed me that it doesn't change much usually
+  - mail archives
+  - irc logs 
+
+See also with others teams if something was forbidden ( but since we
+should be the only one to have access to servers, this should not be a
+issue ).
+
+
+This requires some work, first to estimate the required ressources and
+the projected growth, then to decide the required strategy
+( incremential, full, etc ).
+ 
+I would also highlight the need to have encrypted backups for the more
+sensible set of data, to be sure that passwords keys and others do not
+leave valstar in cleartext, and are not stored in form that someone
+could decipher.
+
+Of course, the usual free/packaged/maintained/no-ressource-hog stanza
+apply for the software we will use.
+
+Any volunteer for the tasks :
+
+- evaluate the needs
+  - discuss with all teams to check we do not forget anything
+- propose and document a backup strategy, based on what we have and what
+we need
+  - off site backup is nice, but we may not have the choice
+  - take in account that a new server is planned, so check with dams
+( who was taked of taking care of this ) for the requirement
+
+- setup the backups 
+- setup some kind of monitoring of the backup ( disc space )
+  
+- check the backups are secure ( I can help on this part )
+
+- write a clear documentation about backup restauration 
+- do regular testing of the previous procedure
+
+ideally, a test of a emergency restoration would be nice ( ie, let's
+assume that alamut exploded and is unusable and need to be restored ),
+but this would requires a spare computer, lots of disk, bandwidth and
+time.
+
+-- 
+Michael Scherer
+
+