Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Administration Unleashed

222CHAPTER 10Techniques for Backup and RecoveryWriting a Backup PlanThe backup plan you write and commit to will be specialized to your needs, yourcompany’s resources, the number of systems to back up, the operating systems runningon those systems, and much more. You will probably go through many versions of yourplan before finalizing it. This section provides a few concepts to think about when decidingwhat data to back up and whether to perform incremental or full backups.TIPIf your systems are subscribed to the Provisioning module of Red Hat Network (notincluded with your Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription), you can use Red HatNetwork to assist with configuration management.What Data to Back UpDeciding what data to back up is nontrivial and might vary for each system. Here is a listof data to consider:. Home directories. Email spools and IMAP directories. /etc/ directory for various configuration files. Shared directories. Database files. Cron scripts. Content management directories such as CVS or SubversionOther thoughts to consider when devising a backup plan:. Does your backup plan include backups on an offsite server in case of natural disasteror physical damage to the office building or server room?. Is redundant hardware part of your plan in case of unrecoverable hardware failure?. Is the total recovery time from backup acceptable for the needs of the company?. Are you alerted when a system failure occurs?. Are you alerted when a failure occurs during the backup procedure?. What is the initial cost of equipment and software?. What is the total annual cost of the backup media? Does it fit in your allottedbudget?. Does the plan scale if additional systems need to be added?