[COLUG] Disk Backup

[Duane]

amccomis2 at mccomis.com wrote:
> Duane,
> 
> Virtualization comes in handy in cases like this:
> 
> - It abstracts the hardware layer, such that the "machine" is now a file and
> can run on any piece of hardware that can host VMWare.
> - backing up a "machine" is now reduced to backing up one file.
> - Even if you needed the actual physical boxes to run, putting a Linux +
> Vmware down underneath the "running" Win98 would still pay dividends because
> you can now literally plug-n-play the machines among each other, trading in
> or out hardware that (of this age) is likely to be coming close to
> end-of-life / expected failures.
> - No matter what OS, having the ability to undo, snapshot, rollback, etc.
> scores major  cool points in my book.
> 
> Bonus points: you could even brag that you solved the Win98 situation by
> installing Linux. And that wouldn't be an exaggeration. :-)

They already run sluggishly, so putting extra layers on top wouldn't be
very acceptable.

I have had a rethink of my original strategy, I was going to clone an
entire installation, now I'm just making a very small base install
(about 200megs) and cloning it.

>From there all the apps will be installed on a network share that is
read only.

Dumping all the AV and similar apps has a huge speed increase, which is
where the cloning will come in, otherwise they would have a lot of
spyware within weeks.

Since the systems don't have PXE boot I'm forced to use either a boot CD
or a partition running a basic linux install which can boot up enough to
load network drivers download a compressed win98 image from a tftp
server on the network and over write the primary partition.

If I wanted to get cute about it I could simply make the images on the
server rw and have the process go in the opposite direction. I saw a
system (using PXE boot) just like this about 9 years ago, although they
were running 95 not 98.

Yes the hardware will eventually been replaced but not at this exact
moment in time, newer systems as they are phased in will run linux and
instead of overwriting the partition they'll simply erase the user space
when the person logs out.

-- 

Best regards,
 Duane

http://www.freeauth.org - Enterprise Two Factor Authentication
http://www.nodedb.com - Think globally, network locally
http://www.sydneywireless.com - Telecommunications Freedom
http://e164.org - Because e164.arpa is a tax on VoIP

"In the long run the pessimist may be proved right,
    but the optimist has a better time on the trip."