Minimal Solaris machine

UNIX Solaris
1

I have installed Solaris 11 Express on my machine and created a raidz2 zpool. Now I want to backup the pool using snapshots.

I am thinking about sending the snapshots using SSH to another mini solaris machine and am wondering which one to buy. The purpose of the target machine would be just to listen to SSH connections and receive the sent snapshots.

I have chosen two PC's and would need to know if they are suitable for the Solaris OS (11 Express). They are ECS NetTop MD120 and INTEL D525MW Mount Washington.

I'll apreciate any other suggestions about the process of backuping snapshots and other suitable machines (they should have passive cooling).

For security reasons, I would like the target machine available only during the backuping.

My idea is this: I would instruct cron to launch a script on the primary machine, which would create a snapshot and send it. I would also intruct cron at the target machine to open firewall port at exactly the same time.

Now I am wondering about how should the target machine determine that the backup has been done and close the port again.

Thanks for your advice,
Dusan

2

You can start by examining the output of:

netstat -an | grep 22 | grep ESTABLISHED

When the backup is being sent and when it is done.

3

Slightly different method: configure the target machine for WOL, and let the source send the magic packet about 3 minutes before starting the backup. Then send the snapshot, as after this is done send a shutdown command.

That way the target machine is only up during the backup, minimizing power costs, and lessening the chance of hardware defects due to constant usage.

4

Powering the server on and off every day might have bigger impact on the hardware than letting it run idle. Especially when there are no fans to wear out. IMO also the disks would be used more heavily when power on/off routine is used, as loading the system requires quite a lot of disk read operations.