Chemistry UNIX Environment Backups

The CUEB is our secure push based backup system. Each client machine uses rsync over ssh to push incremental backups to our backup server, ciryon. It is currently doing full backups of about 30 UNIX hosts, running IRIX, Solaris, Ultrix, OpenBSD, and Linux.

Features of the CUEB are:

• We keep the last 7 backups on disk for easy access. This typically corresponds to a weeks worth of data.
• End-users can easily restore data from any backup on our disks.
• Duplicate files between hosts are hard-linked together to save disk space.
• Once a week, the backups go to tape in-house.
• Once every 4 weeks, the backups go offsite to IUPUI and IUB via MDSS (HPSS).
• Notification to ITG and the end-user if a host has not successfully backed up in over 3 days.
• Full backups are only required for the first backup. All following backups are incremental, which makes for very little network traffic.
• Using public/private keys, the backup mechanism is extremely secure, and avoids man-in-the-middle attacks.

Support Documents

For end-user support, including installing the client software, please see the CUEBclient page.

Diagrams

See our Backup Schedule and Backup Architecture diagrams