Online Backup?

Archieman · 2011-06-13 19:39:16

Hey All -

Was wondering what other Arch users are utilizing for online-backup services? I have used crashplan and mozy with varying degrees of success in winblows environments. My research has turned up several Linux variants such as dropbox, spideroak, wuala, adrive, etc. Are any of you using a particular service that you would feel good about recommending? I am mainly looking for disaster protection here not file-sharing.

Archieman

jnguyen · 2011-06-13 19:44:22

I use tarsnap, which is in the [community] repo. It encrypts on the client side and stores on Amazon S3, with incremental backups so that backups use minimal storage and bandwidth. It is developed by the Security Officer for FreeBSD and is arguably one of the most secure backup services out there (with dropbox being somewhere near the bottom).

Last edited by jnguyen (2011-06-13 19:46:30)

Archieman · 2011-06-13 19:46:17

jnguyen wrote:

I use tarsnap, which is in the [community] repo. It encrypts on the client side and stores on Amazon S3, with incremental backups so that backups use minimal storage and bandwidth. It is developed by the Security Officer for FreeBSD and is arguably one of the most secure backup services out there (with dropbox being somewhere near the bottom).

Thanks jnguyen. What are you paying for the service?

jnguyen · 2011-06-13 19:48:35

Check out http://www.tarsnap.com/ for pricing details. It's dead cheap depending on how many gigabytes you need.

Archieman · 2011-06-13 19:51:18

jnguyen wrote:

Check out http://www.tarsnap.com/ for pricing details. It's dead cheap depending on how many gigabytes you need.

Thanks! Looks real nice and good pricing too. I also like that it is in community repos. I will def be trying this out and will try to remember to post my experience back.

crabman · 2011-06-13 20:21:52

Ive been using duplicity with amazon S3 for three years now - works great. But ill definitely have alook at tarsnap, sounds way better than duplicity.

@jnguyen: Have you ever tried what happens if you kill tarsnap while creating the backup? Or if the internet connection breaks down? Any experience?

crabman

jnguyen · 2011-06-13 20:51:39

crabman wrote:

@jnguyen: Have you ever tried what happens if you kill tarsnap while creating the backup? Or if the internet connection breaks down? Any experience?

If the connection breaks down during a backup then tarsnap will recognise that the connection has dropped and retry after 30 seconds, then after another 60 seconds, then every 90 seconds after that. If you kill tarsnap during a backup (or while waiting for the network to reconnect), then the backup won't be stored on the server. As far as I can tell, the backup is only stored if the transfer completes successfully. You'll probably need to run a "tarsnap --fsck" after that though.

One great thing about tarsnap is that it is incremental. If you backup every day, you can rollback to any one of those backups

Last edited by jnguyen (2011-06-13 20:55:10)

fukawi2 · 2011-06-13 23:53:42

I use rsync.net. Cheap enough for my liking, and reliable. Any downtime is almost always advised in advance.

anonymous_user · 2011-06-14 00:43:52

I use Dropbox myself. For backing up config files and important documents, the free option is more than sufficient. And free is always good

Zeist · 2011-06-14 05:22:52

I use CrashPlan. Besides from a slightly large memory footprint it works really well on Linux and it offers unlimited space, which is good for me since I use just over 2TB which could get quite pricy on a pay per GB basis. I encrypt locally and then backup to be secure.

jasonwryan · 2011-06-15 04:50:41

jnguyen wrote:

Check out http://www.tarsnap.com/ for pricing details. It's dead cheap depending on how many gigabytes you need.

Thanks for the heads up about tarsnap. Exactly what I was looking for.

1080p · 2011-06-15 06:54:54

Tarsnap looks great, cheers for the tip!

onearm · 2011-06-15 07:04:42

I'm a cheap bastard so I prefer a 50€ usb hd to online backups but use github to actually backup all my config files and some scripts

jnguyen · 2011-06-15 07:45:04

No problem jasonwryan and 1080p. I'm really enjoying tarsnap... it's simple, secure and has a great command-line approach (instead of bloated GUI's for a task that really doesn't need a GUI).

onearm wrote:

I'm a cheap bastard so I prefer a 50€ usb hd to online backups but use github to actually backup all my config files and some scripts

I'm paranoid so I store several on-site HDD backups, an off-site HDD backup, and an off-site cloud backup (tarsnap)

ngoonee · 2011-06-15 09:35:15

onearm wrote:

I'm a cheap bastard so I prefer a 50€ usb hd to online backups but use github to actually backup all my config files and some scripts

Isn't that abuse of some sort (of github anyway, since its not the intended usage)? Also, unless you have a private github (paid for) I'm not sure I'd want all my configs world-visible.

orschiro · 2011-10-11 22:04:15

@Archieman

Can you say something to Crashplan?

At the moment I have Crashplan, tarsnap as well as Spideroak in mind. Whilst tarsnap sounds excellent I think it may become too expensive as the amount of data I need to backup is about 30GB. This is where Crashplan with its unlimited space is very attractive.

Any comments on that? How much do you pay for your tarsnap usage monthly and how much GB do you backup?

Regards

Last edited by orschiro (2011-10-11 22:04:26)

jasonwryan · 2011-10-11 22:14:31

orschiro wrote:

@Archieman Whilst tarsnap sounds excellent I think it may become too expensive as the amount of data I need to backup is about 30GB.

Tarsnap is ridiculously cheap. You only pay for the amount on the server and any transfer up or down. As it is an incremental backup, if you are not making frequent and wholesale changes to your data, then the actuall amount of change is minimal.

I'm not a heavy user (currently I only have 8GB backed up), but that looks like costing me less that USD10/year - which to me is a bargain given the quality and security of the service.

neowolf · 2011-10-11 22:28:32

I use DataStorageUnit ( http://www.datastorageunit.com/ ) myself. The fee is annual but extremely reasonable. $50 for 100GB and plenty of options for transferring your backup.

trungpham · 2011-10-12 03:12:54

orschiro wrote:

Can you say something to Crashplan?

Crashplan is great if you have large volume of data to backup. Blowfish 448-bit is good enough for security. Currently I have > 550 GB on Crashplan which would be very expensive to backup on S3, tarsnap... I only use tarsnap for the most important data such as config files, about 10 MB of storage. $5 would last for years

Recently I have discovered cyphertite that sounds good, secure and cheap. It's in AUR and has a website but still at public beta stage. I would keep an eye on its development.

Regards.

Stebalien · 2011-10-12 03:20:44

ngoonee wrote:

onearm wrote:
I'm a cheap bastard so I prefer a 50€ usb hd to online backups but use github to actually backup all my config files and some scripts
Isn't that abuse of some sort (of github anyway, since its not the intended usage)? Also, unless you have a private github (paid for) I'm not sure I'd want all my configs world-visible.

I believe that he is referring to a dotfiles repository.

orschiro · 2011-10-12 04:50:42

Thanks for the advice. Taking the size of my backup into account and the chance that the data will change more often (such as I want to backup my entire linux system as well) I will stick with crashplan over tarsnap. Although cyphertite indeed sounds nice and is reasonable priced. However, I do not want to change the service in the near future just because public beta led to a straight end of the service.

Regards

Last edited by orschiro (2011-10-12 04:51:49)

655321 · 2012-02-04 04:42:39

Hi, I am researching on alternatives for a cloud backup solution thats reliable, strong and secure to store some business critical-files, so far I have checked tarsnap, jungle disk and crashplan, do you guys have any info on those services? experiences? does it work well?

So far im linking jungle disk because of the remote administration without having to install a GUI on the server.

I will probably have to backup Arch Servers and Ubuntu Servers using the same tool.

Thanks for any input you can provide

jnguyen · 2012-02-04 09:59:01

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=948367

ewaller · 2012-02-05 02:15:44

Merging threads

Lockheed · 2012-02-27 22:46:34

jnguyen wrote:

I use tarsnap, which is in the [community] repo. It encrypts on the client side and stores on Amazon S3, with incremental backups so that backups use minimal storage and bandwidth. It is developed by the Security Officer for FreeBSD and is arguably one of the most secure backup services out there (with dropbox being somewhere near the bottom).

Did Tarsnap disappear from AUR? I cannot find it any more and old links are dead.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-06-13 19:39:16

Online Backup?

#2 2011-06-13 19:44:22

Re: Online Backup?

#3 2011-06-13 19:46:17

Re: Online Backup?

#4 2011-06-13 19:48:35

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#5 2011-06-13 19:51:18

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#6 2011-06-13 20:21:52

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