School me on server hard drive management. (Hot swap, SATA channels, LVM, backup, etc.)

[Genes MailLists]

On 09/29/2011 12:26 AM, linux guy wrote:
> I'm building a home server that will run a MythTV backend, zoneminder

...

> 
> Questions

> 
> 3) How does one mount the drives for the OS to access ?  I know all
> about the mount command and auto mounting, etc, but how do I reference
> the drives ? 

  mount the drives by UUID or by Label - just like fedora installer does.

  Use the 'e2label' command to label a disk and simply put something
like this in your fstab (for example)

  LABEL=MythBackup /mnt/mythback ...


If you prefer UUID the blkid command will help.

> 
> 4) How should I approach data backup ?  Right now I have about 250 GB of
> nearly irreplaceable digital images.  RAID ?  Periodic backup to a
> (rotated, stored off site) hard drive via the hot swap slot in the case ?

  whether you RAID or not, I'd suggest backing up to 1 or more USB
drives using rdiff-backup (or just rsync if you prefer).

  I double backup to USB drives .. if using rdiff-backup you may want to
trim the incrementals to the last few months or whatever.

  gene