Red Hat ReaR

stacksofplates

So for our hypervisors and our server for our tape library we want physical recoveries. Veeam has their beta endpoint restoration for Linux, but since we have RHEL for everything, I'm going to use ReaR.

yum install rear genisoimage syslinux

In /etc/rear/local.conf put:

OUTPUT=ISO
OUTPUT_URL=nfs://<share> or file:///<some-path>

You can also use these options

BACKUP=NETFS
BACKUP_URL=nfs://<share>
SSH_ROOT_PASSWORD="password"
BACKUP_PROG_EXCLUDE=("${BACKUP_PROG_EXCLUDE[@]}" '/media' '/var/tmp' '/var/crash')
NETFS_KEEP_OLD_BACKUP_COPY=y

Then just run:

rear -v mkrescue

Then you can boot from that ISO to restore.

Backups can also be taken with ReaR.

In /etc/rear/local.conf add:

BACKUP=NETFS
BACKUP_URL=file:///srv/backup/
NETFS_KEEP_OLD_BACKUP_COPY=y 
BACKUP_TYPE=incremental 
FULLBACKUPDAY="Day" ("Mon","Tues","Wed","Thurs","Fri","Sat","Sun")

Last three lines are optional. By default it does a full backup, so if you want incremental then you need that line. And you will also need the keep old backup line for incremental.

It can also keep the backup with the restore image. It won't be incremental though. For this you need:

BACKUP_URL=iso:///backup/

By default ReaR creates a tar image, however you can use rsync.

BACKUP_PROG=rsync

To create the backup run:

rear mkbackuponly

For backup and rescu ISO:

rear mkbackup

Make sure SELinux re-lables files on reboot

touch /mnt/local/.autorelabel

Alex Sage

Would this work with CentOS, or is is Red Hat only?

stacksofplates

@aaronstuder said in Red Hat ReaR:

Would this work with CentOS, or is is Red Hat only?

I would assume also CentOS. Works on Fedora. Haven't tried it on CentOS yet.

Must be at least version 7.2 though.

Alex Sage

https://access.redhat.com/solutions/2115051

Alex Sage

What's Relax and Recover?

Relax-and-Recover(ReaR) is a recovery and system migration utility. The utility produces a bootable image and restores from backup using this image. It also allows to restore to different hardware and can therefore be used as a migration utility as well.

stacksofplates

So I found a quirk, not sure if it's an actual bug. For incremental backups to work you have to use the NFS syntax (BACKUP_URL="nfs://<server>"). If you mount the share, and then write to the local mount it won't do incremental.