[Mageia-sysadm] Backups

Tue Nov 16 08:02:51 CET 2010

On Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 06:35:20PM +0100, Michael Scherer wrote:
+>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 :
+first, i would make a distinguo between data that need to be backed up
+and data that need to be archived
+
+
+>- 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
+
+
+what do we archive ?
+>  - 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 
+>
+then for each item evaluate what retention is needed
+(subject to discussion)
+ldap, sql, filesystemdata, certificate, keys
+         just keep a few versions in case of screwup or disaster
+svn
+         we probably need just one copy in case of disaster 
+
+logs
+         1 year
+mail,irc
+         forever? actually those are already archives, so probably we
+should move it to the 'backup' section
+
+then for each item find a solution
+
+>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 :
+being the maintainer of bacula (and i use that regularily) i would like
+to help on some tasks, but i have no resources to lead a subproject.
+(btw it supports encrypted backups with public/private keys)
+
+L.
+
+-- 
+Luca Berra -- bluca at vodka.it
+