thoughts on setting up an emergency server

[Janina Sajka]

Well, Greg, you did say "emergency." I wouldn't regard running full time from the CDR as most attractive, but it would
get you back and up in the event of an hd/controller issue--hardware, or firewall breach. This approach does not
substitute for good backups.

Or, just burn a new CDR every X interval -- weekly, monthly, whatever fits your risk vs. funds assessment. No doubt that
fault tolerance costs, it sure does. So, you need to determine what's the best path to getting back up and running,
given your available resources. I would certainly expect you're not talking redundant systems in disparate geographic
locations. Even most businesses don't go that far--and don't really need to.

It's a matter of prudently assessing risks, and planning for recovery.

Here's what I do:

I back up my data on two different machines--one at home and one at the office. I have substantially the same data, in
other words, in /home on my portable (which is my main machine), my office and home server. I keep a backup of critical
configuration data from /etc backed up on /home. I even have a shell script to help me get my configurations back
quickly. For example, I do "cat filename >> /etc/passwd to help restore my users following o n some event that requires
recovery.

Of course, in my situation, I find myself using this strategy mostly because I've decided to upgrade my
installation--not because my system was trashed, but it's really about the same thing. It isn't that hard reinstalling
from scratch if you know your partition setup, and you keep appropriate backups of /etc, /usr/local, /var/ftp/pub, etc.,
etc, as appropriate.

It's the stuff in /home that's not easily recovered, should it be lost.

In my risk assessment, a ups is very important. I keep a ups on my home server because I have frequent
brownouts--several per month. Gregory Nowak writes: > From: Gregory Nowak <greg at romuald.net.eu.org> > > Well, those are
good suggestions , but there are a few problems. > > 1. More hds, controllers, or another machine are out, because they
cost, and I don't have the budget of an it department at my disposal (smile). > > 2. The bootable cdrw is a good option,
because I can keep it updated. > However, this would mean the whole system would be running from ram, and any additional
info stored while the system was running would be lost upon a reboot. > > Greg > > > On Sun, Oct 27, 2002 at 10:55:40AM
-0500, Janina Sajka wrote: > > So, you want what the IT industry calls "faul tolerance?" Good for you. > > > > Do you
have a bootable CD ROM? Why not put the basics on a bootable CDR? > > > > Scaling up from there, the next step, imho,
would be a second hd mirroring the first. Scaling further, a second > > controller for the second hd. Beyond that, I'm
afraid, it's a second machine. > > > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list >
Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup

-- 
	
				Janina Sajka, Director
				Technology Research and Development
				Governmental Relations Group
				American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)

Email: janina at afb.net		Phone: (202) 408-8175