I’m currently working of a DR strategy for our FreePBX sever and have some questions please?
We use the native “Backup” module included with FreePBX.
If we create a “full” and include all audio, I take it we should be able to do a total restore?
What happen if the “version” of freePBX differs from the version that the backup was waken from?
3, What happens if we don’t have the same modules enabled or installed when the restore is carried out? (Example extension dialing)
Yes, although I’d use a full backup (minus the eth0 config files) to the warm host every night. If you ever need to switch it on, you just drop the IP address in and everything should light on the next reboot.
Best case - success. Usual case - bad things happen. Very bad. There be dragons here bad.
See 2 above. If you have commercial packages, you’ll need to work with the FreePBX guys to make sure you can recover to the new server once the IP address is set correctly.
They aren’t. If you back up everything (not “backup”), but do it yourself back up using your root login and something like cpio and a pipe through SSH (for example). This way, you control every aspect of the backup and get all of the files, programs, databases, etc. except for the ones (or three) that you don’t want.
The system’s “backup” utility is really useful for recover back to yesterday on the same machine (even though that’s been known to fail). Doing something like this usually takes a lot more force than the finessed, drag-and-drool interface that you get through the GUI.
There are lots of articles out on the web (in the Wiki too, I think) about setting up “warm spares” for FreePBX. One of them should answer your questions succinctly. If you have more questions after that, let us know.