Kitz Forum
Computer Software => Linux => Topic started by: tickmike on December 04, 2017, 08:30:52 PM
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I am thinking about building a new backup server (this holds all the backups for all the family including my daughters laptop backup from 250 miles away via ssh connection).
I used an old Pentium 4 desktop computer (now 20 years old !) that I had and a striped down version of PCLinuxOS mounted on a SD card for the OS to run 'LuckyBackup' , that was Five years ago and it is getting full :o so I have some more hard drives to add.
The above OS has never been up-dated and is not connected to the internet.
Any recommendations for a new build ?.
Eg case to hold say 6 to 8 x 3.5" hard drives, Motherboard, Linux OS etc.
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Golden rule, for me, is make sure the systems being backed up have no (write) access to the backup server. The server needs to read data from the clients, rather than the clients writing to server.
Failure to observe above means, if clients become infected by malware, they might affect the server too. And especially, the client’s malware might even be able to destroy previous backups stored on the server. :(
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Good point.
All Linux machines. ;)
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I had to reinstate my own server a couple of years ago after the old one died. Mine serves as source control, bug tracking, TV recording and media, as well as backing up the other machines. I used an HP Proliant Micro server, which are decently built and often on offer, think I paid about £120 after cashback. Don’t see any such good offers at the moment, but haven’t looked that hard. Reasonably compact too. Only space for four internal HDDs, though, do you really need more?
Other things to consider are...
If you’ll be leaving it on 24/7, consider power consumption. This might influence your choice of CPU as well. HP Micro seemed acceptable (to me) for power usage iirc, but can’t remember the numbers.
If you’ll be swithing on only when needed, start up time (BIOS self tests) before even starting to boot Linux, can be a nuisance. HP was not so good in this respect, probably just a couple of minutes, but that can seem a long time when you’re waiting to do something.
Do you need an optical drive? Don’t assume. The HP came without one, and adding it would have been a hassle, requiring some kind of special mounting kit.
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I am not sure how paranoid you are regarding hardware but personally I would just use an old PC with Open Media Vault (https://www.openmediavault.org/) which has relatively low hardware requirements and buy a couple of decent NAS hard drives and put them in a mirror RAID.
In my view OMV is the best "low hardware requirements" free NAS OS, it does everything and has a nice interface and plugins system, runs off a USB stick (not using storage space) and is properly free unlike many other (Rockstor, UnRAID etc etc), it will even do ZFS for you if you are in the mood.
If you want to spend a lot of money and want super-robustness then I guess you can go the new-build route 8Gb RAM, ZFS FreeNAS or NAS4free route (but I'm too cheap for that).
GL!
Chunks