Linux Administration Handbook, Second Edition

9.1. Motherhood and apple pie

Before we get into the meat and potatoes of backups, we want to pass on some general hints that we have learned over time (usually, the hard way). None of these suggestions is an absolute rule, but you will find that the more of them you follow, the smoother your dump process will be.

Perform all dumps from one machine

Many backup utilities allow you to perform dumps over the network. Although there is some performance penalty for doing dumps that way, the increase in ease of administration makes it worthwhile. We have found that the best method is to run a script from a central location that executes rdump (by way of rsh or ssh) on each machine that needs to be dumped; you can also use a software package ...