bhruska's picture

I'm a bit confused about TKLBAM backups/restore vs cloning from latest snapshot.  Is there a difference?

I'm looking to change instance types, going from a Previous Generation Amazon instance to a Current Generation instance.  (Current appears to run meaningfully faster.)  I've tested this by cloning a server from the latest snapshot.  It seems to work, but I'm not certain if that's the right way to do this.

Thanks,

Brian

Forum: 
bhruska's picture

I need to make this move ASAP.  Any help appreciated.

Thanks,

Brian

 

Thanks,

Brian

Jeremy Davis's picture

Yes there is a difference.

Snapshots are a convenient point-in-time image of your whole server AWS vHDD (similar to a snapshot in VirtualBox or VMware). They can be handy but are large (they include the whole filesystem) and are only available in AWS. They are not a backup replacement as things can go wrong with snapshots and they may become inconsistent due to disk-buffering and locking.

TKLBAM is a smart backup and migration tool that runs anywhere. It doesn't care if you are running in the cloud or in VirtualBox on your desktop. It is designed as a backup tool and generally has very small backups (obviously depending on the size of your data) as it doesn't backup the whole OS; just the important bits!. Even though it is purpose built backup system you should still test your backups regularly to ensure that everything you need is included (it's smart but it can't read your mind...) and restores work as they should (we try hard to make it as robust as possible but bugs sometimes happen).

I hope that helps...

Here are some links for further reading:
Snapshot Blog announcement: http://www.turnkeylinux.org/blog/hub-snapshots
Original TKLBAM blog announcement: http://www.turnkeylinux.org/blog/announcing-tklbam
All blogs tagged 'TKLBAM': http://www.turnkeylinux.org/blog/tklbam
TKLBAM docs: http://www.turnkeylinux.org/docs/tklbam
TKLBAM FAQ: http://www.turnkeylinux.org/faq/backup-and-migration-tklbam

bhruska's picture

Appreciate your help.  I shutdown the server, updated the snapshot, then cloned from there.  Seemed to work without a hitch.  I am going to experiment with TKLBAM as well.  Thanks again.

Thanks,

Brian

Add new comment