Freedom-01 has suffered from data corruption as a consequence of the infrastructure's backup solution fucking up. This has happened twice. In addition, the server's size has made restoring from artifacts produced by the backup solution extremely difficult. This, to me, basically spells out the obvious: the backup solution isn't working for us.
Given Freedom-01's unique situation, I would like to suggest that we look into an alternative means of backing up server data to avoid situations like this. Clearly bundling everything into one big backup just isn't going to cut it.
Here's some ideas as for how we could accomplish it:
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Doesn't work:
The current implementation. -
Works, but may not cover everything:
If we were to break up the data being backed up into separate backups (e.g. a backup specifically for plugin configurations or world data), we might be able to back up data without using as much disk space. When I had the Archivist role during the Seth era, I actually did something similar in that I would split data being backed up based on the actual content itself. The main plus is again, less disk space usage. However, the main negative is that we would need to be selective, and as a result the backups may not cover everything. -
Works, but questionably legal:
During the beginning of the Seth era, one solution that was used for backing up server data was to give someone read-only access to the server files so that they could download the files over SFTP and then save them without interfering with normal server operations. The main plus with a solution like this is that it uses very little disk space on the actual server. However, the main negative here is the legal ramifications that come with it.