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Relax and recover

Introduction

IT turned out, that veaam does not work witch Arcolinux/archlinux, hence the installation of the component veeamsnap is broken. So I needed another solution. I tried out backup via dd, which I might show on another page, but finally I found this tool with the name rear - Relax and recover. It has multiple options and it seems to work very nice and it is extreme versatile. However, there is a setback. The configuration is very cryptic with configuration files and command line options. The documentation is very much scattered in the internet.

Relax-and-Recover (abbreviated ReaR) is an Open Source disaster recovery solution. It is a modular framework with many ready-to-go workflows for common situations.

Relax-and-Recover produces a bootable image. This image can re-partition the system. Once that is done it initiates a restore from backup. Restores to different hardware are possible. Relax-and-Recover can therefore be used as a migration tool as well.

Currently Relax-and-Recover supports various boot media:

  • ISO
  • PXE
  • OBDR tape
  • USB
  • eSATA storage

It supports a variety of network protocols (incl. sftp, ftp, http, nfs, cifs) for storage and backup as well as a multitude of backup strategies (incl. IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, MircoFocus Data Protector, Symantec NetBackup, EMC NetWorker, EMC Avamar, FDR/Upstream, NovaStor DC, Rubrik Cloud Data Management (CDM), Bareos, Bacula, rsync, rbme, Borg). This results in a bootable image that is capable of booting via PXE, DVD/CD, bootable tape or virtual provisioning.

Installation

Installation on Arcolinux/Archlinux

The installation is straight forward. I used "Add/Remove Software".

image.png

The installation can take a while hence it is compiled from the Archlinux User Repository (AUR).

Installation on ZorinOS/Debian

apt install cifs-utils
apt install rear

Configuration

Create a file like /etc/rear/local.conf:

# Example configuration file for creating an ISO image that
# includes the rescue image and backup on 1 or more iso images
#
# Output defined to ISO image
OUTPUT=ISO
# Location to copy ISO image to
OUTPUT_URL=cifs://nas03.simmy.ch/mybackup
OUTPUT_OPTIONS="cred=/root/.smbcredentials"
# Backup to ISO uses the NETFS workflow
BACKUP=NETFS
# This could be also a mounted USB disk on /backup
BACKUP_URL=iso:///backup
# Split the backup.tar.gz into chunks of that maximum size so each ISO fits onto a DVD
ISO_MAX_SIZE=99999
# The default limit was to small. So I had to increase the size limit.
ISO_FILE_SIZE_LIMIT=9999999999
NETFS_KEEP_OLD_BACKUP_COPY=y

Setup crontab

Create the shell script rear.backup.sh to execute the backup and cleanup the disk.

#! /usr/bin/bash
rear mkbackup -v -d
rm -Rf /var/tmp/rear*
crontab -e

Next time the script runs it will create a backup of the machine and move it automatically to nas03.simmy.ch/mybackup/hostname together with a README file and the log of the backup run.

http://relax-and-recover.org/

https://github.com/rear/rear/blob/master/doc/rear.8.adoc

https://github.com/rear/rear/tree/master/usr/share/rear/conf/examples

https://github.com/rear/rear/blob/master/doc/user-guide/relax-and-recover-user-guide.adoc

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