As an openBSD system can be rebuilt from scratch quite quickly, I've always appreciated rsync for its ability to track changes-only and ship them off-machine over minimal bandwidth.
'Recovery' via full Restore vs. clean Rebuild from known-to-be-clean image or source plus changes is a much debated topic. If you're tapping your 'recovery' because of malware or security or confidence breech, then REBUILD (not RESTORE) is prescribed.
In such cases, rsync can -- again -- be your friend as it will show what file(s) are different from the baseline.
You should FIRST be defining your RECOVERY objectives (and scenarios - data loss only, system impairment, or bare metal), including recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery state objective (RSO). Knowing these, then select a backup tool/methods that fulfill your RTO/RSO objectives. Picking the backup first, is cart before the horse.
All that said, 'bacula' is arguably the gold (if not platinum) open source backup project that is more than swiss-army-knief (i.e. competent) enough, if implemented well, to address your (any) probable RTO/RSO cases.
But do give rsync a look over if you have two or more machines (one sync machine, plus one or more backup target machines).
Cheers,
/S
__________________
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Last edited by s2scott; 20th February 2012 at 09:33 AM.
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