Flexible Backup Strategies

[RyanScottLewis]

Several actions/commands are strung together which form a logical "group" of actions.

For example, a user might want to have this backup strategy

• Generate manifest
• Generate records
• Generate file archive from manifest
• Compress file archive
• Encrypt file archive
• Generate checksum of file archive
• Generate metadata
• Generate backup archive of manifest, records, file archive, checksum, and metadata

Another user might want this strategy

• Generate manifest
• Generate records
• Generate file archive from manifest
• Generate checksum of file archive
• Generate metadata
• Generate backup archive of manifest, records, file archive, checksum, and metadata
• Compress backup archive
• Encrypt backup archive
• Generate checksum of backup archive

Perhaps Cutback could handle both of these cases by splitting actions/commands into stages (in practice rather than theory which is currently the case) and allowing users to move actions to wherever they want within these stages.

For example, in this setup within the following list, any action/command under a main stage (denoted with a number) could be sorted however the user would like:

1. Search
   • Generate manifest
   • Generate records (optional)
2. File Archive
   • Generate file archive from manifest
3. Post-Process File Archive
   • Compress archive (optional)
   • Encrypt archive (optional)
   • Sign archive (optional)
   • Generate checksum (optional)
4. Generate Metadata
   • Generate metadata (optional)
5. Generate Backup Archive
   • Generate backup archive of manifest, records, file archive, checksum, and metadata (optional)
6. Post-Process Backup Archive
   • Compress archive (optional)
   • Encrypt archive (optional)
   • Sign archive (optional)
   • Generate checksum (optional)