Would like to back up my system configuration in Centos 7. What is a good way to do this?
Requirements
- There is no special data that needs to be backed up
- Would like to be able to save and restore to the state that the system was in after I spent all the time to install the OS, install other software, set up network and other configuration.
- Would prefer not to have to touch the actual server and instead use ssh or graphical interface through the VNC viewer I have set up.
There seem to be a lot of tools out there that could be used to do this, but I'm not sure which is the right one for Centos & and for this particular use case. I've looked into: timeshift, lvm snapshots, dump, and clonezilla SE.
I'm really not sure which of these, if any, I should apply to this use case?
Best Answer
Sorry to break this to you, but you're going about this from the wrong angle. :)
Instead of modifying your server's configuration directly and then having to worry about backing it up, you should be using a configuration management system.
I'm partial to Ansible, but there are many other very viable options.
Once you have a config management system set up, not only are your configs backed up, but they can also be version controlled, and easily placed into a dev/staging/prod hierarchy. Additionally, if your server dies, you can deploy and configure a new one automatically, typically within minutes instead of installing and configuring things by hand, which is error-prone, tedious, and time consuming.