@obsolesce said in Agent and Agentless Backups:
@stacksofplates said in Agent and Agentless Backups:
@obsolesce said in Agent and Agentless Backups:
@stacksofplates said in Agent and Agentless Backups:
As much as I like to argue with @scottalanmiller I have to agree that usually agents are easier.
Because the agent based backup meant that to recover the entire guest, I would have to mount a special ISO, it wasn't nearly as straightforward as "restore this backup from 15 minutes ago to Host 2".
That is in no way a requirement of agent based systems. This sounds more like there isn't a reliable way to reproduce a system and the data isn't on a separate volume. Make sure the systems can be rebuilt immediately and you can just reattach the data and be done.
Even with something as simple as ReaR, you define your skeleton volumes you want backed up and include that in your template.
Example (I'll use Ansible since that's what I know):
The template would have this in it:
BACKUP_PROG_INCLUDE=('{{ backup_dirs | join("' '") }}')You'd have a list (in this case called backup_dirs) that gets iterated over:
backup_dirs: - /home/* - /data/* - /var/www/html/*That backup_dirs list is specific to each machine when it's created.
The agent based stuff is really simple because it can very easily be specific for each machine and always be specific when the systems are built without any work after the initial set up.
Just because a system is backed up via agentless backup doesn't mean the VMs data can't be separate. I could have a VM backed up agentlessly that has its data on a separate volume / virtual disk... then I could instantly restore the VM and OS, reattach the data, and not have to rebuild shit.
That's not why I said that. If you have to fully restore a system from an ISO the agent built, then it doesn't sound like the data was separate.
No I meant you would boot to a recovery/boot ISO so you can restore the server from within the recovery encironment
You're missing what I'm saying. If the data volume is separate you just attach it to a fresh VM and don't have to do that at all. The only time you need to rebuild from that recovery environment is when either the data isn't separate or you can't reliably reproduce the OS volume.
