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The problem
Trying to offload heavy read/write traffic from our file server. I also did a deep information dive to assess if we could afford enterprise level storage. That answer basically means a $42K layout at the low end and up to $70K for the high end. I've detailed the result here Enterprise Storage, lots to be gained by doing that but implementing the Short Term plan first as detailed on that page.
Avoiding NFS as much as possible, I'd like to set up rsyncd and use it in combination with rsnapshot generating daily, weekly and monthly point in time snapshots of sharptail:/home to cottontail:/mnt/home/.snapshots (only accessible by root). I'll then remount on localhost read only for self-serve restore actions by users themselves.
Using version 1.3.1 since I've seriously tested that out, from rsnapshot.org…the newer version uses arbitrary intervals like alpha, beta, gamma but my users will understand daily, weekly, monthly much better.
Download source, untar, follow simple instructions in file INSTALL.
Next, and this took some time to dig up
cpan YAML cpan Lchown
On the production server (where /home is local) configure rsync for daemon mode. Create file /etc/rsync.conf with the following content. Notice that we expose /home read only which is a nice approach.
syslog facility = local3 read only = yes list = yes auth users = root secrets file = /etc/rsyncd.secrets hosts allow = 10.11.103.253 uid = 0 gid = 0 [root] comment = / path = /
Create that secrets file, chmod 600, and put a long string in there, like ThisIsVerySecret. Start the daemons.
rsync --daemon
