I’m in the process of setting up backups for my home server, and I feel like I’m swimming upstream. It makes me think I’m just taking the wrong approach.

I’m on a shoestring budget at the moment, so I won’t really be able to implement a 3-2-1 strategy just yet. I figure the most bang for my buck right now is to set up off-site backups to a cloud provider. I first decided to do a full-system backup in the hopes I could just restore it and immediately be up and running again. I’ve seen a lot of comments saying this is the wrong approach, although I haven’t seen anyone outline exactly why.

I then decided I would instead cherry-pick my backup locations instead. Then I started reading about backing up databases, and it seems you can’t just back up the data directory (or file in the case of SQLite) and call it good. You need to dump them first and backup the dumps.

So, now I’m configuring a docker-db-backup container to back each one of them up, finding database containers and SQLite databases and configuring a backup job for each one. Then, I hope to drop all of those dumps into a single location and back that up to the cloud. This means that, if I need to rebuild, I’ll have to restore the containers’ volumes, restore the backups, bring up new containers, and then restore each container’s backup into the new database. It’s pretty far from my initial hope of being able to restore all the files and start using the newly restored system.

Am I going down the wrong path here, or is this just the best way to do it?

  • thelittleblackbird@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    23 days ago

    Some clarifications :

    The 3 2 1 rule applies only for the data. Not the backup, in my case I have the real/live data, then a daily snapshot in the same volume /pool and a external off-site backup

    For the databases you got misleading information, you can copy the files as they are BUT you need to be sure that the database is not running (you could copy the data and n the middle of a transaction leading to some future problems) AND when you restore it, you need to restore to the exact same database version.

    Using the export functionality you ensure that the data is not corrupted (the database ensure the correctness of the data) and the possibility to restore to another database version.

    My suggestion, use borgbackup or any other backup system with de duplication, stop the docker to ensure no corruptions and save everything. Having a downtime of a minute every day is usually not a deal breaker for home users

  • bluGill@fedia.io
    1·
    22 days ago

    Just remember any backup is better than nothing. Even if the backup is done wrong (this includes untested!) odds are you can read it and extract at least some data, it just may take a lot of time. Backups that are done right just mean that when (not if!) your computers break you are quickly back up and running.

    There are several reasons to backup data only and not the full system. First you may be unable to find a computer exactly/enough like the one that broke, and so the old system backup won’t even run. Second, even if you can find an identical enough system, do you want to, or maybe it is time to upgrade anyway - there are pros and cons of arm (raspberry pi) vs x86 servers (there are other obscure options you might want but those are the main ones), and you may want to switch anyway since you have. Third, odds are some of the services need to be upgraded and so you may as well use this forced computer time to apply the upgrade. Last, you may change how many servers you have, should you split services to different computers, or maybe consolidate the services on the system that died to some other server you already have.

    The only advantage of a full system backup is when they work they are the fastest way to get going again.

  • SavvyWolf@pawb.socialEnglish
    1·
    23 days ago

    In regards to full system backups, there’s no real need to back up the OS itself. Canonical will give you a clean Ubuntu install if you ask then nice enough, after all. Personally, the risk of having to spend an afternoon reconfiguring my system isn’t that big a deal compared to the storage and time needed to back up an entire image.

    I know systems generate a lot of “cruft” in terms of instslled programs and tweaked configurations over time which can be hard to keep track of and remember. But imo that should be avoided at all costs because it leads to compatibility and security issues.

    For backing up databases, there’s scripts like automysqlbackup and pg_dump which will export a database to an sql file which can be easily backed up without worrying about copying a broken file.

    I actually recently set up borgmatic earlier today and I’d recommend it except for the fact that you seem to be using Docker, and I’m not sure how best to backup containers.