Launching V'Ger - a new Rust-based backup client from BorgBase

m4nu

Almost 10 years ago, I launched BorgBase as a beta on this site looking for testers. Since then we've grown into a proper backup hosting service supporting Borg and Restic.

After working with both tools (and their ecosystems) for all this time, I never felt like either one fully solved the backup problem. Borg is great at compression and storage efficiency, but it's single-threaded and SSH-only. Restic has the backend flexibility, but you inevitably end up bolting on Autorestic or resticprofile just to get a config file and scheduling. With Borg you need Borgmatic. Either way, you're gluing together 2-3 tools before you even have a working backup setup.

So today we're launching V'Ger, a Rust-based backup client that tries to combine the best ideas from Borg, Borgmatic, Restic and Rustic into one tool, with about 2x the speed of Restic in our benchmarks: https://vger.borgbase.com/#benchmarks

Key things it does differently:

• Single tool, no wrappers needed. Config file, scheduling, retention, hooks - all built in.
• Multiple backends. Local folders, S3, SFTP, and our optimized REST server that can run maintenance (compaction, checks) server-side so you don't need to download backup data. More at https://vger.borgbase.com/backends
• Simple desktop GUI to create and restore backups for those who prefer clicking over typing.
• Written in Rust, so no GC pauses, low memory usage, full multi-core utilization.

Getting started takes about 2 minutes:

1. Use the install script or grab binaries from the release page
2. vger config: creates a project, user, or system-scoped config file
3. Add the folders you want backed up. You can also run dump commands (e.g. Postgres) without writing to disk, like Borgmatic does.
4. Add a remote repository
5. vger init then vger backup (you can still back up any folder spontaneously with vger backup /some/folder)

Full quickstart guide: https://vger.borgbase.com/quickstart

Source is on GitHub (A ⭐️ would be appreciated if you find it interesting.)

If there's something you'd want to see in a backup tool, let me know here. Now is the best time to shape the roadmap.