[Zope-CMF] backup strategies

[Paul Winkler]

On Fri, Feb 07, 2003 at 04:09:17PM +0000, Sally Owens wrote:
> Is there any way for example to *test* Data.fs when you back it up (to be 
> sure that you are not backing up corrupt data)?

there's a utility in utilities/ZODBTools/fstest.py that checks
for errors. Run a cron job that runs this tool and mails you the
result.

There is also another utility, fscheck.py that gives more extensive
reports, and IIRC is new to Zope 2.6.

> What backup strategies do other organisations employ to minimize the risk 
> of your Zope/CMF sites falling over?

be sure not to overlook the advantage of running zope
behind a proxy, especially if your system will ever be 
exposed to the internet.  ZServer is not designed to handle
DOS attacks, or very high traffic in general.  A proxy
such as Squid can both mitigate this, and with proper
caching greatly decrease the load on your Zope system.

As for protecting our data, currently much the same as you're suggesting.
We make regular backups of Data.fs (using cp), and regularly
run fstest.py.
Strongly considering a move to DirectoryStorage on reiserfs.
http://dirstorage.sourceforge.net/

This would enable, among other things, incremental backups and 
semi-live replication using a custom shell script (and soon
there will be a feature that supports live replication.)


The cool thing about live replication is that you could in
theory eliminate the single point of failure with Zope / ZEO: the ZEO server.
By running monitoring software such as mon, you could
set up a system that fails over from one ZEO cluster to another.
Not trivial to set up, but I think it should work.


-- 

Paul Winkler
http://www.slinkp.com
Look! Up in the sky! It's ANDREA SNOWBALL!
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