Hi
I’m setting up a web server and need a strategy to back it up. I want to be able to bring a backup service on line if the primary service fails, without having to do much thinking. Here’s what I think might be a strategy. The questions are: will it work and what have I overlooked?
I thought I would duplicate the partitions from the primary server onto a backup server.
Dynamic content: There are several web servers, one for each of several domain names. The document roots for these are on a /home partition at /home/username/public_html where there’s a separate “username/public_html” for each domain name. I propose to use rsync to update /home periodically over the network, mapping to the same locations on the backup server. Will rsync do the job over a Samba network, transferring only files that have changed?
Static content: all the directories other than /home are static (except I suppose /tmp). These I would update to the backup server only occasionally rather than periodically; e.g. after working on the root filesystem of the server. Is there any reason why rsync wouldn’t work for that too?
Thanks for your advice
Swerdna