Cumulus Support

I was wondering if it's possible to take Cumulus' ftp-upload capabilities and add the ability to also send certain data files and/or folders to the user's ftp site, for the purpose of automatically providing "off-site" backup to our historical data. It would be great if this option was user selectible as daily, weekly, or monthly. I'm a big fan of backup redundancy and was afraid of introducing another ftp program which would automatically backup these files. My fear is it might interfere with Cumulus processes.

Any thoughts?

-Tom

Cumulus isn't a back up program, and I don't want to introduce facilities which aren't connected with its primary function. You could if you wanted use the facility to run an external program once a day, but you would be far better to use a proper back up program.

krmidas wrote:I was wondering if it's possible to take Cumulus' ftp-upload capabilities and add the ability to also send certain data files and/or folders to the user's ftp site, for the purpose of automatically providing "off-site" backup to our historical data. It would be great if this option was user selectible as daily, weekly, or monthly. I'm a big fan of backup redundancy and was afraid of introducing another ftp program which would automatically backup these files. My fear is it might interfere with Cumulus processes.

Any thoughts?

-Tom

You can sync files with skydrive or dropbox for free

steve wrote:Cumulus isn't a back up program, and I don't want to introduce facilities which aren't connected with its primary function. You could if you wanted use the facility to run an external program once a day, but you would be far better to use a proper back up program.

Which folders should be backed up? Both "data" and "backup"?

-Tom

krmidas wrote:Which folders should be backed up? Both "data" and "backup"?

I back up the entire Cumulus folder.

You can sync files with skydrive or dropbox for free

The problem with services like those and others like Google Drive, is they work by having you create a special folder on your desktop where you drop the files and folders you want to backup/share, as opposed to letting you specify an already-existing folder (like the Cumulus folder)

I'll keep searching.

-Tom

Personally I use Google Drive, and have a scheduled task that copies the Cumulus folder over to my Google Drive folder once a day. That way there is no risk of some corruption on the Google drive (which also syncs to other machines) replicating back to my PC and over writing the good data.

Idrive?

mcrossley wrote:Personally I use Google Drive, and have a scheduled task that copies the Cumulus folder over to my Google Drive folder once a day. That way there is no risk of some corruption on the Google drive (which also syncs to other machines) replicating back to my PC and over writing the good data.

That sounds ideal. I'll investigate.

-Tom

steve wrote:Idrive?

I set up iDrive last night. On the surface it seems to do exactly what I was hoping. I set it up to backup files that have been added or changed everyday at 2:00 AM.

It may be a coincidence, but when I looked this morning, the iDrive backup occurred successfully, but Cumulus wasn't running. I don't remember shutting it down. Is there any reason why the Cumulus folder couldn't be backed up while the software is running (since files are being written to every few seconds)?

As I said, it may be a coincidence. Perhaps I shut it down and forgot to re-start...

-Tom

I haven't used Idrive, but it looks like it ought to know what it's doing. Any decent backup system copes with files being open, and Cumulus wouldn't care as long as the backup software didn't lock the file, which again, any decent backup system shouldn't do. The diags files will show when Cumulus was started and stopped.

steve wrote:I haven't used Idrive, but it looks like it ought to know what it's doing. Any decent backup system copes with files being open, and Cumulus wouldn't care as long as the backup software didn't lock the file, which again, any decent backup system shouldn't do. The diags files will show when Cumulus was started and stopped.

Thanks, Steve. I'll let it do another cycle tonight at 2:00 AM, and if it shuts Cumulus down, I'll attach the diags files.

-Tom