Relax-and-Recover (abbreviated rear) is the leading
Free Software disaster recovery framework.

Relax-and-Recover is written entirely in the native
language for system administration: as bash scripts.

Experienced users and system admins can adapt or extend
the rear scripts to make it work for their particular
cases.

Relax-and-Recover is a modular framework with
ready-to-go workflows for common situations.

The basic workflow is as follows:
Specify its configuration in /etc/rear/local.conf
(cf. /usr/share/rear/conf/examples) and run
"rear mkbackup" to create a backup.tar.gz on
a NFS server and a bootable recovery ISO image
for your system.
A recovery medium which is made from the ISO image
boots a special rear recovery system.
Log in as root and run "rear recover" which does
the following steps:
It runs the rear installer that recreates the basic
system, in particular the system disk partitioning
with filesystems and mount points, then it restores
the backup from the NFS server and finally it
installs the boot loader.
Finally remove the recovery medium and reboot the
recreated system.

Relax-and-Recover supports various kind of boot media
for the recovery system (incl. ISO, PXE, OBDR tape,
USB or eSATA storage), a variety of network protocols
(incl. sftp, ftp, http, nfs, cifs) for storage and backup
as well as various external third-party backup methods
(incl. IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, HP DataProtector,
Symantec NetBackup, EMC NetWorker, FDR/Upstream,
NovaBACKUP DC, Bareos, Bacula, rsync, rbme).

Warning for users who like to upgrade Relax-and-Recover:
Users who already use it must re-validate that their
particular disaster recovery procedure still works.

Additionally when you already use Relax-and-Recover and
you upgrade software that is related to the basic system
(e.g. kernel, storage, bootloader, init, networking) or
you do other changes in your basic system, you must also
re-validate that your particular disaster recovery
procedure still works for you.

You must test in advance that it works in your particular
case to recreate your particular system with your
particular recovery medium and that the recreated system
can boot on its own and that the recreated system with
all its system services still work as you need it in your
particular case.

You must have replacement hardware available on which your
system can be recreated and you must try out if it works
to recreate your system with your recovery medium on your
replacement hardware.

Be prepared that your system recovery fails to recreate
your system. When it fails to recreate your system
it is usually a dead end. Be prepared for a manual
recreation from scratch. Always have all information
available that you need to recreate your particular
system manually. Manually recreate your system on your
replacement hardware as an exercise.

For more information see
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Disaster_Recovery

Relax-and-Recover comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY;
for details see the GNU General Public License.