Backups, Archives, and Recovery

18. Backups, Archives, and Recovery#

This chapter covers archives, compression, checksums, retention, restore testing, and remote/offsite backup workflows built on SSH and rsync.

  • Archives: Package files for storage or transfer.

  • Compression: Reduce archive size.

  • Integrity: Check data with hashes.

  • Restore tests: Verify backups before relying on them.

  • Recovery: Recover from mistakes or incidents.

Chapter Video

Easy rsync Backup with tar and cron (daily, weekly, monthly) (22:14) by Tony Teaches Tech

Hosted on YouTube; property of its original creator, embedded here for educational reference only.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:

  1. Create and inspect archives safely.

  2. Use checksums to verify backup integrity.

  3. Design simple retention rules.

  4. Test restores in a lab directory.

  5. Use SSH/rsync knowledge for remote backup workflows.

Chapter Flow

  1. Maintenance and Backup Scripts

  2. Restore Testing

Glossary

#

Term

Explanation

1

archive

File containing a collection of files.

2

tar

Common Unix archive tool.

3

compression

Encoding data to use less space.

4

backup

Copy kept for recovery.

5

restore

Recovering data from backup.

6

retention

Rule for keeping or deleting backups.

7

checksum

Value used to verify data.

8

offsite backup

Backup stored away from source system.

9

rotation

Cycling old backups out.

10

recovery

Returning to a working state.