Thanks everyone for your suggestions. This is all very helpful. On 6/21/07, Steve Siegfried <sos at zjod.net> wrote: > > Michael Bruder asked: > > > > Hi all, > > > > Would any of you be willing to give me some advice on the best way to do > a > > bare metal recovery of Linux? The University that I work for is > currently > > in the beginning stages of moving an Oracle 10g installation off of a > > dinosaur VMS server, and we cannot determine the best way to do a bare > metal > > recovery of the RedHat Enterprise 4 OS that will house the new Oracle > > installation. It was easy in VMS if we lost the operating system disk > to > > just pop in a new drive, and restore the OS from tape. This doesn't > seem so > > easy with RedHat. We are currently researching options, but I would > > appreciate any input. > > > > Thanks, > > > > Mike > > Create a "hot + spare" set of partitions and back up to 'em every evening > using almost any of the "only copy the stuff that's changed and delete the > stuff that no longer exists" style backup programs _plus_ an extra step > at the end to reestablish the original /etc/fstab for the spare system > (which will ensure the "spare" system can be booted as a replacement for > the "hot" one). The nice part about the "only what's changed" style > backups is that, even for very large systems, the backup usually runs > in less than 20 minutes (and, if you're not overly picky about getting > every last user file updated, the backup can be run during "production" > time, too). > > Important: When creating the "spare" partitions, make sure they're > physically on different drives from the "hot" ones. That way, you can > lose a drive and still have an up-to-date bootable system. > > When setting up grub, make sure you can boot either the hot or the > spare system. If you lose the drive with grub on it, you'll need to > re-install grub, and after doing so, can re-establish /boot from the > backup copy. > > I've been using this method for years, have had drives go bad and have > never lost anything more than what changed since the previous backup. > > As for the Oracle database itself, I'd suggest you use a mirrored RAID > array. It's not usually as fast as other types of RAID (e.g.: striped), > but it is usually bulletproof with respect to having drives go sour. > > Hope this helps and drop me a line if you need help finding the right > backup program'idly, > > -S > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20070621/cd4ec318/attachment.htm