How can I incrementally backup a large amount of data [with rsync]?

Question

A website contains ~40GB images + files which needs to be backed up. Rollbacks need to be possible daily for the last 30 days. And backup server < 1.2TB

My idea is to have one full backup from 30 days ago, then incremental backups for the last 30 days. On each day the last incremental backup is combined with the full backup and a new incremental backup is added.

Can this strategy be implemented with rsync, if so how?

Are there any problems with this plan? A better plan?

PS: Incremental backups, not backup incrementally (which rsync does automatically)

Answer 1

try looking into rsnapshot, should be in the package repo. It's based on rsync and i'm pretty sure will do what you need.

Answer 2

Also check rdiff-backup. Similar to rsnapshot, with different tradeoffs in terms of disk efficiency and restore speed.

Answer 3

I think you want the backup feature of rsync. It allows you to rename instead of overwriting the old file. Just make the backup extension the date you did the overwrite and your incremental updates will all have the dates built into the files that saved before the new changes were written.

From the man page -b, --backup make backups (see --suffix & --backup-dir) --backup-dir=DIR make backups into hierarchy based in DIR