Comment on Setting up a server for a research team. What should be in my checklist?
rainwall@piefed.social 1 day agoBackup is step one, or even step 0, of setting up a server. The amount of frustration and even job loss a backup can prevent is always worth the expense of time/money.
Backup can be setup scripts/config files/automation if the data doesnt matter, but you do need it. Also, even if they say the data doesbt matter, the data almost always matters. It may not now, but it will in 2 years when people use the server for real work and everyone just doesnt even begin to think about a backup until it fails one day and they lose all their grant and thesis data.
bergetfew@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
Could you suggest what would be the most appropriate backup solution in this case? I could also ask them to arrange a backup drive or a cloud provider if needed.
rainwall@piefed.social 11 hours ago
Depends on what you're doing a bit. Databases? Hypervisors? Just files? If all of the above, its best to use an actual product this. Either foss like borgbackup or Urbackup, or something like Veeam which is a popular pay option.
If its a proxmox hypervisor, they have their own free backup appliance, but you need a second physical server to run it on.
If it's just databases, most have a built in way to take a backup. Just google the name and backup. Make sure it's running automatically and is moved to a separate server on each run.
For files, rsync is a great option.