Best Online Remote Backup Service w/Linux Client? 70
technocraft asks: "I've been searching for an online service to backup data from my Linux file server and have come up with nothing. For many users, Carbonite looks to be a great solution: Affordable, with 'unlimited' capacity. Unfortunately for me, you can only backup from Windows XP and explicitly NOT from external drives or network mapped drives (like my file server)."
Is anyone aware of an online backup services without these restrictions?
This looks pretty good (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.rsync.net/ [rsync.net]
Base rate: $1.80/gb/month
Volume discounts:
25-49GB - 10% Off
50-99GB - 20% Off
100-199GB - 30% Off
200-399GB - 40% Off
400-999GB - 50% Off
1TB+ - 60% Off
You get supposedly unlimited storage, and pay for only what you use.
I haven't actually tried them though.
Re:This looks pretty good (Score:5, Informative)
We're customers of the parent organisation, JohnCompanies [johncompanies.com], and I can't recommend them highly enough. The thing that makes them stand out in my opinion is the support, you don't get clueless newbies reading from an FAQ like you do with every other hosting provider I've ever encountered.
I've been looking for an excuse to try out rsync.net, it seems like an interesting service, for example it offers WebDAV access, which is built into Windows, OS X and KDE.
Yeah, I know I sound like a fanboy or astroturfer, but I don't care, it's really rare to find a company that actually gets it so right when there are so many incompetents around, especially in the hosting business.
Re:This looks pretty good (Score:2)
Wouldn't it be a lot cheaper just to just have one of your employees carry a DLT tape home every week? What's the obsession with backing up over the 'net? It isn't cost effective by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, this is seven times the cost per gig of making a DLT backup, and a DLT backup costs you that much -once-, not monthly.
The best network backup, if you really have to have such a thing, is to set up a second site in another state.
Re:This looks pretty good (Score:1)
What about the quality of the tape? Employee puts tape into her purse/bag/briefcase with all the other garbage in there, not a good place for a tape. How hard would it be to get the tape from an employee if someone wanted to? Employee takes tape, leaves it in car when they pick up groceries, opps, someone stole
Re:This looks pretty good (Score:1)
Re:This looks pretty good (Score:1)
Re:This looks pretty good (Score:2)
Poor man's solution (Score:1)
I realize this wouldn't be suitable for large companies but for my home network, I just use a regular webhosting provider for system backups. I use one-and-one which is $4.95/mo for 50gb of space, duplicity on the Linux side which is able to gpg encrypt the volumes and incrementally backup the systems, transfering the volumes over FTP to the webhost. The backup directory is configured so as not to be publicly accessible but it's gpg encrypted in any case.
I'm not a big fan of rsync backups. In the case
Re:Poor man's solution (Score:2)
Re:Poor man's solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This looks pretty good (Score:1)
While I agree that tapes are an old, dying technology, there is no need to resort to hyperbole.
They'll appear to backup ok, but most will be bad after several uses. If you have a terabyte to back up, you're going to need about a dozen tapes a night, no matter how little has changed.
If you don't verify your backups (even on disk or network backup) then you deserve to lose your data. And since when does anyone do a full nightly backup of terabytes of data? You do quarterly full backups with monthly,
Re:This looks pretty good (Score:3, Informative)
If you have serious backup requirements, LTO-3 tape drives are about $6000, the tapes are about $80 each, and they hold (in our experience) close to 1TB with compression turned on. You'll need a fast machine to prevent shoe-shining the tape, as you want to drive ~40MBytes/sec into them for best performance. The tapes last for practical purposes indefinitely --- it's a close cousin of DLT, and
Re:This looks pretty good (Score:3, Interesting)
That sounds really cool, except I'm surprised at how high the price is. Between photos and home movies, I have about 100GB of data I'd really like to get backed up offsite, and it grows by about 2GB per month. I have some other stuff I want offsite as well, but it's very small.
So, according to their pricing scheme, it would cost me $126 per month to store my data, and the price would increase by about $4 each month as my data grows. Storing my data for a year would cost me nearly $1,800. That probably
DIY Route might be good in this instance (Score:3, Interesting)
If you have multiple locations available for your use -- and if you're a home user, who doesn't? (parents, friends, etc.) -- it's a lot cheaper and you can get a lot more flexibility if you take an old PC, put a bunch of drives in it, and set it up somewhere. Then just have your systems replicate to it at night. (Yes, it's not bidirectional if you just use vani
Re:DIY Route might be good in this instance (Score:2)
Install Debian, install rsyncd if it's not already there
Look into rdiff-backup. From "apt-cache show rdiff-backup":
Re:DIY Route might be good in this instance (Score:2)
And you shouldn't. Run it over ssh.
rsync -e ssh -avSHx --numeric-ids / root@example.com:/backups/`date -I`/
Rsync and ssh (Score:2)
So just to restate what I should have said: the only thing you'd need to have running
Re:This looks pretty good (Score:2)
I've checked out probably a dozen backup services, and most were around 5x as expensive. These guys [backup.com] for example, charge $65/month for only 10gb. Another called me to give a quote and when I told them that another company quoted $300/month (before I found rsync.net), they laughed a bit and said they couldn't go anywhere near that cheap. Granted, t
roll your own - or Amazon S3 (Score:2)
But if you weren't going to do that, Amazon offers:
15c / GB/month + 20c / GB xfer
Some middlewares already exist, like Jungledisk.
Re:This looks pretty good (Score:1)
Radicode
Re:This looks pretty good (Score:2)
Me? I've only personally used mozy [mozy.com] and while I liked it, it fails your requirement of linux compatibility (whi
Re:This looks pretty good (Score:3, Interesting)
So what do they do? They send out a weekly 'canary' saying nothing happened. If something DOES happen, they don't send the canary.
Re:This looks pretty good (Score:1)
I use Carbonite, and I've backed up over 100GB so far. My cost is $5 per month. The cost with rsync would be $126 per month. How can there be such a massive discrepancy? I'm sure the rsync service is probably more robust, but it costs 25 times as much? Something is not right here.
If a Pizza Hut pizza costs you $10, a quality pizza from a local place might cost you $15. But if rsync was running the local place, you'd have to pay $250 for that pizza. Momma mia!
Newegg.com is selling a 320G hard drive for $
Re:This looks pretty good (Score:2)
VaultLogix (Score:1)
VaultLogix is a little expensive compared to other services though. But there are reasons for that. I use it on a couple servers.
Get a cheap hosting site (Score:2)
Re:Get a cheap hosting site (Score:2)
PS, you added the 'business' part in yourself, its not from smitty, further weakening your case.
blacksun (Score:3, Informative)
Re:blacksun (Score:1)
I developed and maintained [and, sadly, had no say in the design] the Saskatchewan Air Show web site for 2 years until the accident that occurred in 2005, then the organization decided to give up and well, to my knowledge there isn't going to be an Air Show ever again... unless someone is willing tp pay off their debt.
Anyway, back on track. They were originally hosted by Blacksun... and I have to say we had nothing but problems. When I firs
More details (Score:2)
Re:More details (Score:1)
I'm looking for easy, reliable offsite backup functionality. I'm a photographer with a lot of photos. I use a Linux box with a raid array for my primary storage. This is backed up to DVD piece meal. I've also been using an external usb drive as more a nearline backup device.
In terms of bandwidth and speed, I expect my data to be slowly backed up over time. Probably will need a few weeks to get everything uploaded. I'm assuming the backup client will use idle time to transfer. Once t
Forgot to add size of backup (Score:1)
Re:Forgot to add size of backup (Score:1)
Re:Forgot to add size of backup (Score:2)
Or you can set up a backup server on the other side of your house and hope both servers aren't taken out by the same disaster.
Re:Forgot to add size of backup (Score:2)
I think the biggest issue for you to consider is how much security you want for your data. I don't just mean encrypted and properly administered, but also the likelihood that the company will be around for the next few years, and prices won't go through the roof.
Consider Carbonite. They claim unlimited storage for only $5/month, but I'm not sure how they plan to do this and maintain a profit
"Personal" online storage seems to be the way (Score:1)
Re:"Personal" online storage seems to be the way (Score:2)
Re:"Personal" online storage seems to be the way (Score:2)
Start with a good enclosure like the BYTECC ME-835U2F ($45). It has an internal power-supply using a standard A/C power cord so there are no funky wall warts or AC adapters to lose. It has both Firewire and USB so you can pick your poison. It's an aluminum shell so it will probably hold up well. Plus it has a 2nd internal fan which is designed to keep the hard drive cooler (most external units omit fans or only have a small 40mm fan in the back).
Tack on
How do you trust? (Score:3, Interesting)
Presumption: After a crash or loss, you may not have access to any of your own encryption keys.
Query: How can you possibly trust any third party not to take liberties with personal or business information entrusted to their care?
I really think you're better off taking care of backups in-house, along with of course keeping some of those same backups off-site in a secure manner.
Re:How do you trust? (Score:2, Informative)
No trust necessary (Score:2)
Re:No trust necessary (Score:2)
Re:How do you trust? (Score:2)
GPG can encrypt using a symmetric key. Re-encrypt all the aforementioned encryption keys using GPG, and post the result to your Slashdot profile or something.
Re:How do you trust? (Score:2)
Re:How do you trust? (Score:2)
A backup is copied to the remote server as user2. Once the backup is complete, change its owner to user1. user2 will then no longer be able to read, modify or delete the backup file.
If you are confident with the syntax of sudoers(5) then sudo(8) is a good way to do this. If not then it can be done with a cron job, as long as you ensure the job runs once the backup is compl
Re:How do you trust? (Score:2)
Yes, that would probably work. Does rsync.net support that?
Also, I personally wouldn't fully trust that, given the number of local-root holes that Linux seems to be prone to having.
Re:How do you trust? (Score:2)
bandwidth costs... (Score:2)
It's not the online backups that sound like your concern but "outsourcing backups", otherwise you'd backup to a RAIDed pair of disks or backup to tape, both which will be cheaper than $onlineserver + $bandwidth costs. If the tech (could be you) loses the tape, breaks the tape, corrupts the filesystem that is the target for the backup
Re:bandwidth costs... (Score:2)
> $lost per minute...
Up to the maximum specified in the contract, which may be zero.
External SATA drives... (Score:2)
Re:External SATA drives... (Score:2)
Sounds like somebody should let someone else handle their investment banking. You're not thinking this math through very clearly. Have you, perhaps, bought a hybrid to save money?
Cost for offsite backup: around $2/GB*month.
Two SATA drives (lifespan of three years): $300
How many GB can you get in a three year timespan for $300?
$300=36*$2*X
X=4.17GB
So at the cost already mentioned, you b
Re:External SATA drives... (Score:2)
Sounds like somebody should stop being a condescending prick... I suppose it's easy on Slashdot - in real life, someone'd have curbstomped them by now...
So at the cost already mentioned, you break even if you've got 4GB of critical data assuming that *BOTH* drives make it to the three year mark, which is definitely pushing it.
Re:External SATA drives... (Score:2)
Which means that for 95% of the target audience (i.e. people with a high techknowledge and interest) the online-solution is going to suck major.
Even if I backed up *only* my digital photos and own written documents (i.e ignored the movies and oggs since they can be recreated from the CDs (though at a cost of 100 hours of work or something), even
Simply THE best (Score:1)
I work for these guys, vaults in 3 redundant datacenters, 10 years doing remote backup for almost EVERY operating system out there and, most importantly, a thiry day free (as in beer) trial just to check out what we can do. Not to mention we're one of, if not the biggest, player in the continental US when it comes to remote data storage.
1000 gmail accounts ... (Score:2)
-b.
Re:1000 gmail accounts ... (Score:2)
Much easier way to do this. Still not a good idea, but at least a better implementation.
Jungle Disk / S3 (Score:3, Informative)
S3/Jungledisk (Score:1)
1.2 Petabytes of Low Cost Storage in the Works (Score:1)
Re:1.2 Petabytes of Low Cost Storage in the Works (Score:1)
Divinsa is another option (Score:1)
For Best Data Centers, NetMass gets my vote (Score:1)
Amanda open source software (Score:1)
http://www.zmanda.com/quick-backup-setup.html [zmanda.com]
Sago Networks (Score:1)
DreamHost (Score:2)