Koozali.org: home of the SME Server

[ANNOUNCEMENT] Turn SME7 into a dedicated backup server

Offline painkiller

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Affa, usb backup and rise function
« Reply #75 on: June 03, 2007, 10:16:32 PM »
I like this contrib and works good.

I backup the files to a usb disk. Can i use the disk in an clean installed sme to rise. And have a 100 % same server? I don't have a second server to use the rise function but this would be a great option. Can you tell me if this is possible?

Offline mmccarn

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[ANNOUNCEMENT] Turn SME7 into a dedicated backup server
« Reply #76 on: June 04, 2007, 06:27:12 AM »
The manual (http://wiki.contribs.org/Affa) states that the 'rise' function doesn't work if the backups are kept on a different file system (like a USB drive).

You would need to move your latest backup to /var/affa (or some other location on the root filesystem of the new system) and configure affa to use that location for the 'RootDir' before running the "rise".

mweinber has given the command to use when moving affa archives in an earlier post -

Offline m

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Re: Affa, usb backup and rise function
« Reply #77 on: June 04, 2007, 12:35:13 PM »
Quote from: "painkiller"
I backup the files to a usb disk. Can i use the disk in an clean installed sme to rise. And have a 100 % same server?


The rise function only works on dedicated backupservers. Affa does not allow a rise on a server from its own backup archive, regardless where it is located on, external or local disk. This is reasonable, as Affa always makes  backup of localhost before the rise. On a dedicated server this backup is almost empty and only contains configuration data. In your case, it would contain all data of your production server, which are already in the archive you use to rise from.

You should run
Code: [Select]
# affa --full-restore JOB scheduled.0
You can run this for a job, which is located on your USB drive. The server can be a fresh install or the existing installation.
This copies the data and configuration from the scheduled.0 archive to your server (and deletes all existing newer data!), signals all necessary events and finally reboots the server. Your server then is in the same state, as it was at the time when scheduled.0 did run.

Offline m

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[ANNOUNCEMENT] Turn SME7 into a dedicated backup server
« Reply #78 on: June 04, 2007, 12:38:52 PM »
Quote from: "mmccarn"

mweinber has given the command to use when moving affa archives in an earlier post -

If you ever need to move an archive, try
Code: [Select]
# affa --move-archive JOB NEWROOTDIR
This function is available since version 0.4.0

Offline painkiller

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ok, thank
« Reply #79 on: June 06, 2007, 06:36:29 PM »
I'm gone try this on in a vmware session see if this is working for me. I let you now if this is working for me.

Offline painkiller

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Worked
« Reply #80 on: June 06, 2007, 08:58:55 PM »
Ok, vmware sessie started.
mounted usb to clean install of sme.
Copy .pl file and added this to affa database.

affa --full-restore JOB scheduled.0

and al went perfectly thanks all.

In this file i used the mount point that sme generated. (/media/usbdisk) in the howto was suggested that you better can use automount. But SME automount already mine usb disk is it save to use both functions. if not how can you disable SME automount function for only this usbdisk?

Offline m

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Affa version 0.5.0 available
« Reply #81 on: June 12, 2007, 07:09:08 PM »
A new Affa version smeserver-affa-0.5.0-0.noarch.rpm is available on the mirrors.
Amongst several minor improvements, this version better deals with long term network outage. See changelog for more details.
I recommend to update.

Offline mmccarn

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[ANNOUNCEMENT] Turn SME7 into a dedicated backup server
« Reply #82 on: June 12, 2007, 07:38:21 PM »
Is there a repository I can use for updates, or do I have to update manually?

Offline m

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[ANNOUNCEMENT] Turn SME7 into a dedicated backup server
« Reply #83 on: June 12, 2007, 07:43:47 PM »
Quote from: "mmccarn"
Is there a repository I can use for updates, or do I have to update manually?


No repo. Please download and update manually.

Offline m

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Affa bugtracker
« Reply #84 on: June 15, 2007, 06:37:20 PM »
Affa now is listed in the bugtracker contribs section.
Please report all bugs, new feature requests and documentation issues there.
Thanks.

markseymour

[ANNOUNCEMENT] Turn SME7 into a dedicated backup server
« Reply #85 on: June 20, 2007, 11:45:01 PM »
Michael,

You already have a placeholder item in the wiki called:
[Todo] Local Affa server plus a Affa server in remote location.  
Does this represent an un-umplemented/tested capability, or is it
just a matter of documenting something that already has been proven?

It is exactly how I want to use Affa.

Mark

Offline m

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[ANNOUNCEMENT] Turn SME7 into a dedicated backup server
« Reply #86 on: June 22, 2007, 12:09:37 AM »
Mark,

Quote from: "markseymour"

You already have a placeholder item in the wiki called:
[Todo] Local Affa server plus a Affa server in remote location.  
Does this represent an un-umplemented/tested capability, or is it
just a matter of documenting something that already has been proven?
Mark

Originally have planned to implement some kind of  'chained' setup, i.e. the local Affa server triggers the run on the remote Affa server via the PostJobCommand, which backups the just created scheduled.0 archive. You can do this with Affa as it is now, but on the remote all the archives contains the scheduled.0 of the local Affa server. This makes it impossible to switch over to a standard setting, which backups the production server directly. The remote Affa should run with an option to manipulate the pathes, where I haven't solution for, yet. So I have postponed it for the moment.
The idea of a 'chained' setup was to reduce the load on the production server. But on today's hardware with multi core cpus and fast disks one will hardly notice the additional load.

 
Quote from: "markseymour"

It is exactly how I want to use Affa.

My standard setup for critical servers is a local Affa server with short backup intervals (1 or 2 hours) and a remote Affa server that directly backups the production server nightly (or more frequently if hardware power and bandwidth is sufficient). When you loose your production server you can rise the local Affa server, setup a new Affa hardware and copy the archive from the remote Affe server to it.
When you loose both the production and local Affa server (fire, surge or the like) you still have the Affa server in the remote location. This setup scenario is pretty save, as it's most unlikely that you will loose 3 machines in two independent  locations at the same time.

Edit: latest Affa version is 0.6.0

Offline soprom

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[ANNOUNCEMENT] Turn SME7 into a dedicated backup server
« Reply #87 on: June 30, 2007, 04:49:19 PM »
After upgrading to version 0.6, I receive an error:

I uninstalled previous rpm's and did:
Quote

rpm -i perl-Filesys-DiskFree-0.06-1.2.el4.rf.noarch.rpm
rpm -i smeserver-affa-0.6.1-0.noarch.rpm


Then,
Quote

# affa --status
Argument "de" isn't numeric in multiplication (*) at /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/                                                 5.8.5/Filesys/DiskFree.pm line 144, <HANDLE> line 1.
...
Sophie from Montréal

Offline m

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[ANNOUNCEMENT] Turn SME7 into a dedicated backup server
« Reply #88 on: July 01, 2007, 12:10:39 PM »
Quote from: "soprom"
After upgrading to version 0.6, I receive an error:

Sophie,
please raise a bug in the bugtracker contribs section.
Thank you.

Offline soprom

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Sophie from Montréal