Secure Off-site Linux Server Archiving Backup
Realm Business Systems provide Secure Off-Site remote Linux Server Archiving Backup, providing full Server Backup Archives in Scheduled, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, and Yearly archives. Data restore including a complete SMEServer restore is possible from any of the backup archives. Realm Business Systems backup servers are privately owned and co-located at a secure local Datacentre.
AFFA stands for; Automatische Festplatten FernArchivierung
- AFFA is secure: All transfers and connections are made by using the SSH protocol with public/private key authentication
- Periodically runs unattended full backups. Only differences to the previous full backup are transferred over the network
- Using rsync with optional bandwidth limit and compression allows backups over the internet
- Uses hardlink technique, i.e. physical disk space only needed for the differences between two full backups
- Keeps a configurable number of scheduled, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly full backup archives
- Interrupted jobs continuing with already transferred data when restarted
- Backups the default e-smith directories, files and databases, when property SMEServer is set to yes
- Additional directories and files can be included
- Directories and files can be excluded from the backup
- Non-SME server linux systems can be backed up by setting the SMEServer property to no and using an include list
- In ESXi mode, running virtual machines can be backed up.
- Configurable nice level for rsync processes on the backup and source server
- Optional run of custom programs before and after a job run (e.g. running tape backup)
- Checks the disk space left after a job run with warning levels strict, normal or risky
- Extensive checking of failure conditions
- Sends failure messages to a configurable list of email addresses
- Sends a warning message, if the backup server runs out of disk space
- Installs an optional watchdog on the source server in case the backup server fails (SME Server only)
- Watchdog sends warning, if an expected backup did not run (SME Server only)
- Watchdog sends a daily reminder message, if the error continues unchecked (SME Server only)
- Option to display current status of all jobs showing times of last and next run, size and disk usage
- Status can be mailed on a daily, weekly or monthly schedule
- Option to display all existing archives of a job shown date, number of files, size and bytes transferred from the source
- Option to send (and revoke) the public key to the source server (SME Server and ESXi only)
- Option to ‘Rise’ the backup server to a production server from a backup (SME Server only)
- The Rise feature does not physically move data and therefore is extremely fast and needs (almost) no extra disk space
- Rise option can be run remotely as the NIC driver configuration of the backup server are preserved
- Compares installed RPMs on source with backup server. Sends warning message, if not in sync
- Undo Rise option to restore the backup server
- Logs to /var/log/affa/JOB.log and /var/log/affa/affa.log with optional debug switch for higher verbosity
- Log files are rotated weekly, with 5 logs kept