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Looking for a viable backup solution
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Looking for a viable backup solution

sirpumpkinsirpumpkin Member
edited January 2018 in Help

I'm currently looking for a new viable backup solution.

At the moment, I'm using BackupPC, which is nice, but has some problems:

  • There is no reasonable way to duplicate the backup server ("backup the backup-server") so I have to run two BackupPC servers independently of each other (instead of the second server just pulling the backups from the first one).

  • You can't use cloud storage like S3, as it needs hardlinks.

  • It uses a lot of inodes, so many in fact, that I might have to rebuild one of the backup servers, as the inodes are nearly full (which is the main reason I'm looking for a solution now).

  • It isn't really fast, although this might also be related to the slow CPU both of my backup servers use and isn't really the main problem. Would be nice if there was some way to improve though.

What I like about BackupPC:

  • Nice webinterface, backups are easy to restore

  • Simple to set up

  • Uses pull backups

  • If something goes wrong, it sends me an eMail.

  • There are nagios monitoring scripts available that can easily be used.

What I'm looking for in a backup solution:

  • Pull backups
    => I don't really like to perform push backups. I have quite a few servers. What if one of the servers gets hacked? A hacker would be able to gain access to the backup server and could delete all backups, potentially even of the other hosts. If this is possible, I don't need to make backups :D

  • Possibility to use reliable cloud storage in some way
    => With backuppc, this is not possible, as it relies on Hardlinks, which these services do not support. Currently I have to backup about 400 GB of data, which is not that much, but this may increase up to 2TB and I want to store this as reliably as possible. A good backup server with RAID is quite expensive, so I might want to use one of these services in the future.

  • Easy to monitor (eMail warnings if backups fail etc.)

  • Full system backup
    => I can't be bothered to specify the folders that should be backupped. I might forget something and then I'm screwed - please just backup everything.

  • Easy to restore
    => It should be simple to restore files from a backup.

  • Possibly encryption, so that the backup server never sees unencrypted data. Isn't a priority though.

Here is what I'm currently evaluating:

  • Borg
    => Borg looks really nice, but it does Push-Backups. I'd prefer to do pull backups. I could do push via borg and then pull to some cloud storage, but it wouldn't really solve my issue, I guess?

  • rclone
    => A friend recommended rclone. It would be push too, as far as I understand, but I could apply the same principle as above. I'd have to write my own backup script though and implement a solution for monitoring it. Shouldn't be too hard, but if I can avoid it, I would like to.

I know that there are more backup solutions, and maybe there are even ones that fit my needs better. I'd be glad if you share your opinions and experiences with me.

Thanked by 2imok DanSummer

Comments

  • JackieSungJackieSung Member
    edited January 2018

    Currently, I'm using backup.sh which can automatically generate and upload my pointed encrypted compressed MySQL files or any other file to my google drive on schedule. Simple and convenient.

  • Push vs pull is not really the issue, it's more about the trust model, protecting against hacked clients vs hacked servers:

    http://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/faq.html#how-can-i-protect-against-a-hacked-backup-client

    Thanked by 1WSS
  • UmairUmair Member

    @sirpumpkin said:
    I'm currently looking for a new viable backup solution.

    Did you find a new solution ? Or are you still using BackupPC ?

  • k4zzk4zz Member

    I upgraded to BackupPC v4 with SSD which was much faster than v3. This could address at least your last problem.

  • Can't you use Acronis as it block-level and much faster. Even @Clouvider offers a low-cost license with storage in the EU and USA location. They may increase the cost a little at a later date once they reach the Tier they're after if that's what they're doing, but at least you can enjoy low cost while you can.

  • I guess cheaper and effective solution it's to build your own/rent a sysadmin to create a bash script to create automatically backups with cronjobs and to add your backup servers as "NFS storage" to can mount them like they are physically on same server.
    I recommend a sysadmin because he needs to avoid syslag and huge bandwidth consumption during backup" :smile:
    Good luck!

  • chipchip Member

    Borgbase can be used with borg and makes the whole setup easy to use it can also be setup to notify you if a machine doesn't connect /perform a backup (not exactly sure which one)

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