[rrd-users] Getting restorable backups of rrd files

[John P. Rouillard]

Hi all:

I need to backup a couple of thousand rrd files that are updated every
5 minutes. and I don't want to shut down the update process while the
backup is going on.

I am planning on using rsync, but the question is is that safe?

The rrdtool dump and restore commands export the data to an xml format
file and there are a couple of web pages that refer to this as a
'backup' of the rrd file. I assume that by using rrdtool dump, it will
act just like a reader would and give me something consistant that I
could use to restore the rrd even if the file was in the process of
being updated.

The question is if I just copy the binary file (.rrd), can I end up
with something that rrdtool will think is corrupted?

For my purposes loosing one or more data values that are being updated
at the time of the backup is ok, but I don't want to lose the
structure of the rrd file. So as long as I can restore the rrd file
and have rrdtool keep updating the file I will be satisfied.

Thanks for any info.

--
				-- rouilj
John Rouillard
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My employers don't acknowledge my existence much less my opinions.