In April 2011 one of my design clients asked me about the best way of backing up their data remotely. Since the setup for my photographer client was working so well, I suggested that a backup machine could be kept externally at someones home and the data could then be synced between this machine and a machine at the office. The setup consists of a staging computer that makes a copy of the data from the main server and this copy is then synced with the remote server computer that also keeps a few days worth of backups by using symbolic links. The 3.4TB of data was initially synced at the office and then the backup server was carried to the home of one of the directors where it has been performing quite well so far. I have also had to create a PERL script that runs on the remote backup server that reads a file from the webserver that is running at the office that contains a command that is to be run. A command is selected from a list on the office server and an encrypted file is then created with this command in it, the script on the remote server then reads this file, decrypts it, and then runs the command that is contained in it. This allows the remote server to be contacted from any location that has an internet connection for when the next backup is ready.

A time did come when the data was out of sync due to some filesystem layout changes so some data had to be carried from the office to the backup server on an external drive, but the data was synced successfully so that the backup could continue. Below are pictures of the main server with the staging machine beside it and of the backup server setup at the remote site.