Back up and restore your Linux system with Ghost

Backup is the basis of disaster recovery, which is the process of copying all or part of the data collection from the application host's hard disk or array to other storage media to prevent the system from operating errors or system failures that result in data loss. Traditional data backup is mainly the use of internal or external tape drives for cold backup. But this approach can only prevent human failures such as operational errors, and its recovery time is also very long. With the continuous development of technology, the massive increase of data, many enterprises began to adopt network backup. Network backup is generally achieved through professional data storage management software combined with corresponding hardware and storage devices.

At present, the more common backup methods are:

Regular tape backup data.

Remote tape library, disc library backup. Transfer data to a remote backup center to make a full backup tape or disc.

Remote critical Data + tape backup. Using tape backup data, the production machine sends critical data to the backup machine in real time.

Remote database backup. is to establish a copy of the primary database on a backup machine that is separate from the production machine where the primary database resides.

Network data mirroring. This approach is to monitor and track the database data of the production system and the important target files that need to be tracked, and transfer the update logs to the backup system in real time over the network, and the backup system updates the disks based on the logs.

The remote mirror disk. With high-speed Fibre Channel line and disk control technology to extend the mirrored disk to a location away from the production machine, the mirrored disk data is fully consistent with the primary disk data and updated in a synchronous or asynchronous fashion.

Data backup must take into account data recovery issues, including the use of two-machine hot standby, disk mirroring or fault tolerance, backup tape offsite storage, key component redundancy and many other disaster prevention measures. These measures enable system recovery after a system failure. However, these measures generally can only deal with a single point of failure of the computer, the regional, devastating disaster is helpless, and does not have disaster recovery capacity.

With Ghost, backup and restore time is less than the time to install a Linux system , usually we can back up important data, the backup object can be a partition, or the entire disk, not only can back up the Linux operating system, can also back up windows.

Lab environment: VMware virtual Machines
Experimental Purpose: Install DOS and Linux dual systems and then use Ghost to back up and restore the Linux system
First, create a new CENTOS3 operating system in the virtual machine:

Then we mount the ISO image, using the Maple Leaf Toolbox, which contains a DOS operating system:

Start a virtual machine
Press and hold the ESC key on the keyboard to select CD-ROM drive to boot from the CDROM:

Select the MS-DOS toolbox

Select Pure DOS boot

Select F32 to partition it first

Press PageDown on the keyboard to select the FAT32 format, capacity input 4024MB, for the DOS system, the rest of the Linux system installed

Boot2 we don't have to operate, just press ENTER.

Hard disk partition, select "Yes"

Then format all of the partitions

Whether to copy the system files to the hard disk, select "No"

Finally restart the computer
Also boot from the CD drive, enter the DOS toolbox, input: SYS c: Use the C drive as the system disk

Input: Copy ghost C: Copy ghost file contents to C drive

Restart your computer to see if you can enter DOS

Description Yes, then
Double-click the optical drive chart in the lower right corner of the virtual machine, mount the ISO image of the CENTOS3, and restart the computer:

Also choose to boot from the optical drive
Enter the Linux installation interface:

Here we skip the detection of CD media:

Click "Next":

Because we're just doing an experiment, here's the custom installation:

Select Manual Partitioning:

As we can see,/dev/sda1 is just the DOS operating system that was built, the remaining disk space, a 512MB swap partition, and the rest as the root partition:

Partition completion:

Here we choose Grub Boot Linux operating system by default, the above "Win32" is the DOS system that was just built:

Then click Next directly, enter the root password, then click Next, until the installation is complete, restart the computer, enter the following screen:

Now we start using Ghost to back up the Linux system and select "Win32":

Input: Ghost for Backup:

Select "To image" here to make the partition image:

Here you can see that the entire disk is 8 g in size:

Enter directly into:

Here you can see there are three partitions, we want to back up the Linux partition, so choose Linux, enter and then press TAB to enter:

The top look in represents where we are backing up the Linux partition, where C:1.1[]fat drive stands for the DOS system and chooses it. Then take a name for the backup file Name:linuxbak:

Select "Fast" quick backup:

Then select "YES"
This is followed by the entire backup process:

Back up and restore your Linux system with Ghost