Open Tech Notes

Two hard drives failed at the same time on RAID5

Obviously, it is a huge disaster, 2 out of 3 hard drives failed in RAID5 coincidently at the same time. Fortunately, I have the backup, but still, it is painful to recovery every details.

Taking advantage of “post-commit”

If the SVN system could be a good backup system, then the "post-commit" script would be a hidden gem. After I have done the "weird" requirement from the programmers, It trigger me think about a nice backup system.

Writing a remote executable SSH command in post-commit script of the SVN system. After every commit, the system will automatically put all files to two different hosts. The two hosts can be located in two different cities, even two different countries.

No one cares if you can back up

I borrowed a book - Backup & Recovery by W.Curtis Preston - from library. As usual, I like read preface first so that I can get some background of the book.

What gave me a great impression was the author’s friend Joe Fitzpatrick said "No one cares if you can back up–only if you can recover."

Definitely, I truly believe it because it happened a lot of  around us. The company in the next door backed up their data by tape. What a coincidence! The tape they used have trouble to be reloaded while the hard drives in the server die. The reason is quite  simple — this tape has been used every night during the past three years.

Backup system for small network

From my last post, I got an idea about center backup system for a small network. There are a lot small companies in town. The typical network is about around 10 computers runing Windows OS  and all of them share one internet connection via a small switch and a router.  They usually use CD/DVD-R/RW to backup their data. The problem is, at very beginning , everybody likes to do it, after a couple of weeks, most of them feel it boring and useless. After a couple of monthes, I can say, nobody likes it.

When I used the WinSCP since my last post. I am thinking of seting up a linux server with SSH server. In each Windows client, setup WinSCP. The linux server can be setup anywhere, even in the boss’s home as long as the Internet connection is stable. Not like Samba, scp is pretty easy to use and the WinSCP is powerful.