Short project for sysadmin

[Tomm Douglas]

Hi,

Purchasing a couple of new HP laptops, each with only 129G internal ssd drives.

So, I'll be using external sata 1TB usb drives for the apps/data/etc, as well as backup processes.

The 1st laptop will run windows11

The 2nd will convert windows to ubuntu.

I've started to pull together a rough plan/process to setuo the systems, as well as backup (local) the entire systems ssd+hdd drives.

However, it occurred to me that a remote sysadmin might be helpful to set everything up, test everything initially.

if anyone knows of anyone I can discuss this with, let me know.

Thanks

-bruce

bado...@gmail.com

[Seth Allen]

Hi Bruce.

If you are backing up your data, and this data matters to you, please look into the 3-2-1 rule.

3-2-1 rule

3 copies

2 mediums/devices

1 offsite

lets use pictures as an example.

you have the photo on your device. then a duplicate copy of the photo in another folder. and another duplicate in google cloud. that would fulfill the 3-2-1 rule. 1 offsite is a bit much for personal use, and its expensive, because it implies cloud storage. it is to cover for a "what if a tornado hit the building" scenario.

i would recommend purchasing a Synology NAS and let it be your primary source of off device backups. might be a bit expensive, but they are essentially plug and play, and have software that makes what you're trying to do a non-issue.

the part people don't talk about with backups is testing them. at one company i worked with, they claimed to have backups on X and Y interval and scope. first backup i tested out of curiosity was a complete failure after a 3 hour restore attempt. extremely concerning, considering its what made their bread and butter. what good is a backup if you can't trust it? have a routine of testing your backups and process. data is cheap until you lose it.

also, i really would not recommend relying on external SATA USB drives for anything but convenience. they are not as fickle as a flashdrive, but not far off. definitely have an off device backup of whatever is on those.

just my two cents.

Seth

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[bruce]

Hi Seth!

Thanks for the input. And you are quite correct, but I "plan" on
periodic/frequent testing of the backups as an additional level of
caution.

All of this is my looking into how to craft a reasonable solution, to
the issue I find myself in due to a crashed internal 2.5" sata drive.

-bruce