Slow disk access while rsync - what should I tune?

[Jonathan McKeown]

On Sunday 31 October 2010 22:44:25 Matthew Dillon wrote:
> :> and the output produced by dump is not live-accessible whereas a
> :> snapshot / live filesystem copy is.  That makes the dump fairly
> :> worthless for anything other than catastrophic recovery.
> :
> :Ever heard of "restore -i"?
>
>     Have you ever tried to restore a single file from a 2 Terrabyte dump
>     file ?  Or even better, if you are using incremental dumps, try
>     restoring a single file from 6 dump files.
>
>     I'm not saying that dump/restore is completely unusable, I'm saying
>     that it MOSTLY unusable for the use cases people have today for
> backups.

I'd argue that if you're routinely restoring single files, you aren't managing 
your time or your users' expectations properly.

Backups are /for/ catastrophic recovery, imo, and users shouldn't expect 
systems staff to be routinely restoring single files they've inadvertently 
deleted. Users need to realise that when you delete something it goes away: 
that's what delete does, which is why you're usually asked to confirm it.

Restoring single files for individual users should be very much a special case 
and not a routine service; otherwise you risk being snowed under with file 
recovery requests.

Jonathan