Choosing a storage snapshot tool
Conclusions
The software solutions presented in this article are designed to create images and clones of data carriers – all of these tasks are performed reliably and without errors. (See Table 1 for a side-by-side comparison of the tools described in this article.) Differences arise in the application scenarios.
Table 1
Cloning Software
Clonezilla | CYA | Partimage | qt-fsarchiver | Snapper |
|
---|---|---|---|---|---|
License |
GNU GPL |
BSD |
GNU GPL |
GNU GPL |
GNU GPL |
Supported filesystems |
ext2/3/4, XFS, JFS, Btrfs, HFS+, FAT16/32, NTFS, UFS |
ext2/3/4, XFS, UFS, ZFS, Btrfs |
ext2/3, XFS, ReiserFS, JFS, UFS, HPFS, NTFS, FAT16/32 |
ext2/3/4, XFS, JFS, FAT16/32, NTFS, Btrfs |
Btrfs |
Profiles |
No |
Yes |
No |
No |
Yes |
Archiving |
No |
Yes |
No |
No |
Yes |
Live system |
Yes |
No |
Yes (SystemRescueCD) |
Yes |
No |
Scheduled |
No |
Yes |
No |
No |
Yes |
Intranet connection |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Image comparison |
No |
No |
No |
No |
Yes |
If you only want to create images under openSUSE – or another system with the Btrfs filesystem – it is best to use Snapper as a fast solution. For servers that lack a GUI, Partimage and CYA are better suited. However, due to the lack of filesystem support for ext4 and Btrfs, Partimage is only of limited use in Linux-only environments.
Qt-fsarchiver is the best fit for systems with a GUI. Thanks to the optionally available Live DVD, it can also act as a first-class alternative to the visually antiquated Clonezilla in heterogeneous IT infrastructures. Due to the intuitive user interface, qt-fsarchiver hardly requires any training. Thus, nothing stands in the way of an enterprise backup strategy that also includes images and cloned data media.
Infos
- Clonezilla: http://www.clonezilla.org
- CYA: https://www.cyberws.com/bash/cya/
- Partimage: http://www.partimage.org
- qt-fsarchiver: https://sourceforge.net/projects/qt-fsarchiver/
- Snapper: http://snapper.io
- doClone: http://doclone.nongnu.org
- Duplicacy: https://duplicacy.com
- rsnapshot: https://rsnapshot.org
- GPT and operating system support: http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/
- PAE: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension
- Clonezilla download: http://www.clonezilla.org/downloads.php
- rsync: https://rsync.samba.org
- CYA documentation: https://github.com/cleverwise/cya
- SystemRescueCD: http://www.system-rescue-cd.org
- FSArchiver: http://www.fsarchiver.org
- qt-fsarchiver download: https://sourceforge.net/projects/qt-fsarchiver/files/
- Snapper download: https://software.opensuse.org/download/package?project=filesystems:snapper&package=snapper
- Snapper GUI: https://github.com/ricardomv/snapper-gui
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