not sure what kind of complicated backup solution you need, but mine is a simple bash-script build like this.
It'll first create snapshots of databases and emails to new directory on hard drive #1. Then it'll mirror the newly created snapshots and other important files to hard drive #2, using rsync.
#!/bin/bash
DESTINATION=/backups/$(date +%Y-%m-%d)/
mkdir -p $DESTINATION
cd $DESTINATION
MIRROR=/home/backups/
echo "Making a backup of all databases.."
for db in database1 database2 database3 ; do
echo "$db.."
mysqldump -uroot -pMyPassword $db | gzip >mysql_$db.sql.gz
done
echo "Making a backup of all emails.."
logger -p mail.warn "Shutting down dovecot for backups."
/etc/init.d/dovecot stop
tar cpvjf ./dovecot.tar.bz2 -C /var/mail/ dovecot
/etc/init.d/dovecot start
echo "Done, mirroring to $MIRROR."
logger -p user.notice "Weekly backups created. Mirroring.."
echo "backups.."
rsync -rltv --delete /backups/ $MIRROR/mysql_and_dovecot/
echo "audio.."
rsync -av --delete /home/shared/audio/ $MIRROR/audio
echo "storage.."
rsync -av --delete --exclude=_unsorted /home/shared/archives/ $MIRROR/archives
# further directories to mirror go here
logger -p user.notice "Important files mirrored to $MIRROR."
exit
my real setup is a bit more complicated, because it has to manage three computers with 8 hard drives, and my policy is to have all important data backed up on two different physical machines. So there are additional scripts mirroring the files across computers (rsync + nfs-mount) as well as doing daily manual synchronisation of work data between notebook & workstation using unison.
I guess you could solve most of your problems by looking at
rsync (unidirectional synchronisation) and
unison (bidirectional synchronisation), and writing some very simple scripts around them.
No idea why you should need to launch XLS files for that..
