Backup/Restore

[Richard Lynch]

Brian McCann wrote:
>      Hi all...I'm having a conceptual problem I can't get around and
> was hoping someone can change my focus here.  I've been backing up
> roughly 6-8 million small files (roughly 2-4k each) using dump, but
> restores take forever due to the huge number of files and directories.
>  Luckily, I haven't had to restore for an emergency yet...but if I
> need to, I'm kinda stuck.  I've looked at distributed file systems
> like CODA, but the number of files I have to deal with will make it
> choke.  Can anyone offer any suggestions?  I've pondered running
> rsync, but am very worried about how long that will take...

Do the files change a lot, or is it more like a few files added/changed
every day, and the bulk don't change?

If it's the latter, you could maybe get best performance from something
like Subversion (a CVS derivative).

Though I suspect rsync would also do well in that case.

If a ton of those files are changing all the time, try doing a test on
creating a tarball and then backing up the tarball.  That may be a simple
managable solution.  There are probably other more complex solutions of
which I am ignorant :-)

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