Advice on backups

[Dmesa99]

Hello,

I'm looking for advice on how to back up an entire system. I recently started a new server on an old HP desktop I was given. It is currently running Ubuntu Server 24.04 and is only running a modded Minecraft server at the moment. However, I'm planning to make some hardware upgrades and don't want to lose the configuration I have already created, as it has been running smoothly for a while now. Ultimately, I am looking for suggestions on how to back up everything on that server to a Windows computer, as well as how to automate this as a daily or weekly task.

Thanks in advance! Looking forward to the help!

[MiszS]

You can use cobian reflector, its open source, and had all the options i needed for backup

[Bersella AI]

Your requisitions may indicate a full system backup. The helpful and detailed Arch Wiki can be referred to, in which a system backup with Tar was introduced.

 

It is also recommended to leverage another hard drive, rather than a separate Windows client, to store the consequent tarballs, as this is accessible immediately when the system panics and needs rollback. Otherwise that Windows client would have to be turned on right before the syncing task begins, requiring Wake On LAN or something else, and would add up further preparing steps in system rollback.

[Eigenvektor]

You don't really need a full system backup. User data and configuration files should be enough.

 

For my own server (e.g. mail) I use rsnapshot, which is based on rsync to periodically mirror these files onto two different systems (one of which then backs them up to two different storage devices).

 

This system creates rotating snapshots every 15 minutes, which are then further backed up as hourly, daily, weekly and monthly snapshots.

 

The advantage is that you're dealing with plain files rather than some property formator that isn't accessible without the backup software. So you can easily look at and/or restore individual files.

 

The only thing needed to back up to the other systems is some form of network drive access or SSH access.