Someone on Lemmy posted a phrase recently: “If you’re not prepared to manage backups then you’re not prepared to self host.”
This seems like not only sound advice but a crucial attitude. My backup plans have been fairly sporadic as I’ve been entering into the world of self hosting. I’m now at a point where I have enough useful software and content that losing my hard drive would be a serious bummer. All of my most valuable content is backed up in one way or another, but it’s time for me to get serious.
I’m currently running an Ubuntu Server with a number of Docker containers, and lots of audio, video, and documents. I’d like to be able to back up everything to a reliable cloud service. I currently have a subscription to proton drive, which is a nice padding to have, but which I knew from the start would not be really adequate. Especially since there is no native Linux proton drive capability.
I’ve read good things about iDrive, S3, and Backblaze. Which one do you use? Would you recommend it? What makes your short list? what is the best value?
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First copy on offline USB disk on my server itself. Disk is turned on, backup done, disk goes off. Once a day.
Second copy on a USB drive connected to an OpenWRT router of my home, the furthest away from the server (in case of fire, I could be able to grab either of the two).
Third copy offsite on a VPS.
I use restic & backrest with great satisfaction.
My current strategy might be a bit over the top,but it works.
I have two main entities that contain data worth backing up - the NAS and to a much smaller extend my Proxmox cluster (which is partly within my house,partly at Hetzner).
User PCs do not have any User data saved, they all work with network drives mapped to the NAS, only irrelevant amounts of data are stored on them that gets backed up via Free File Sync. For the Notebooks I use the same concept as we are using a WG VPN 99,9% of the time anyway,but some important folders get also synched via Free File Sync for offline use if no mobile connection is available.
For proper backups I have basically three classes of data that I maintain: Prio 1: The real real important stuff. Photos of once in a lifetime events, important documents, etc. Prio 2: The stuff you still don’t want to loose. All other photos, the scanned documents, home folders, VMs/LXX backups, configurations, etc. Prio3: Everything else,mostly data that could be downloaded again. Easily. Movies, etc.
Prio3 data is currently only living in the NAS and does get backed up once in a while on a external hard drive. It’s mainly backed up as I am lazy and in case the NAS craps out I don’t want to reload all the stuff…that would take months.
Prio2 data gets backed up fully: For the NAS data: It gets backed up to B2 with versioning according to my needs (usually 3d,2w,3m,1y,but that depends highly on the source). Additionally full external hard drive backups every few weeks. (I would kill to get my hands on a proper tape drive again,I had one back in the day,but it was used and old and died) Some data is also stored on Synology C2 atm,but I will replace that soon with another cloud provider, likely Hetzner.
For Proxmox: Basically the same, but I use TUXIS instead of B2 and Hetzner instead of Synology C2. Additionally I have a old PC with Proxmox backup server which turns on once a week and safes the whole cluster before turning off again. In the future this PC is planned to replace the External hard disk’s,but currently hard drive prices are insane.
For the P1 data: Same as above,but it’s definitely staying on a second cloud provider. Additionally I also create archive blue ray disk’s every few month. (Usually every 4). These go into the safe deposit box at my bank and additionally to a second storage location.
And of course I have detailed instructions about this in my will so even if both my wife and I die my kid can figure it out.
Restic (or rustic) and Hetzner storage box 🤩
I started this past year with iDrive because of their incredible welcome deal if you switch from another service. I started a trial with Dropbox with the same email and sent them the requested screenshots for verification- they approved it. Spending $10 for the first year of 5TB
It’s pretty slow on uploading, but it works. Customer service is attentive and caring. Probably going to go to a local NAS and a different online solution within the year. It’s a nice cheap padding as I learn how to do this right. The intro deal might be worth it for you, too, though I don’t think it’s the best long-term option
For devices like laptops and PCs. I use Urbackup to make backups.
For all the apps I host on Kubernetes I setup S3 backups to self hosted Minio.
I like S3 because I only pay for what I use and it has auto storage tiering.
I use the unlimited consumer backblaze with private key on a windows VM. I provision a 40tb iscsi connection to the VM from a NAS and all kinds of various homelab systems and devices store thier backups there. Works great and is the cheapest possible option at $9 a month.
Is that not against their TOS? Could make the service more expensive for the rest of us
Bsckblaze doesn’t care, they know they’ll get their money when @Unforeseen@sh.itjust.works tries to get data back from backup.
Restoring data is free from backblaze.
Well yes and no. The rate at which you get your data back is where the gotcha lies anything up to 8TB is free if you send them $280 and they’ll refund the money once they get the drive back. Anything over 8TB is where it gets pricey.
And do that multiple times?
There aren’t any “gotchas” they absolutely lose money us who store more than a few TB but its worth it considering that we are in the minority.
Someone from BB posted a graph showing the distribution of data usage over all users and the VAST majority are under 1-2 TB
And the situation where I need to restore more then 8tb would be when I lost all my original data, and the backup NAS itself.
If that happens I’m not worrying about spending $280.
I’m not sure about the iscsi protocol. They allow VMs, including harddrives via USB, so the point of doing this making it more expensive does not apply considering someone could just hook up 100tb+ of USB drives and still be clear under the TOS.
If they did have a problem with this I would just do that instead.
A server in a friend/family member’s home. All of the cloud based backups I’ve encountered seem either unaffordable or have annoying limitations.
Or simply sneakernet drives to a friend’s home. Good excuse to visit a friend more often.
This is the way
This. Install a NAS in a friend’s house, give them 10% of the capacity as a thank you.
Yup I’ve got a box in my mum’s house that all my off site backups go to and it’s a damn site cheaper just to give her some money for the electricity cost of it each month than pay for any cloud service.
100% this. OP, whatever solution you come up with, strongly consider disentangling your backup ‘storage’ from the platform or software, so you’re not ‘locked in’.
IMO, you want to have something universal, that works with both local and ‘cloud’ (ideally off-site on a own/family/friend’s NAS; far less expensive in the long run). Trust me, as someone who came from CrashPlan and moved to Duplicacy 8 years ago, I no longer worry about how robust my backups are, as I can practice 3-2-1 on my own terms.
3,2,1.
My nas is a Synology with raid.
- Backup with versions to a single large HD via USB. This ransomware protection or accidental deletion. (Rsync)
- Offsite copy to backblaze b2.One version. (Rsync) (~$6/month) This would be natual disaster protection. flood, fire.
- Second not raided cheaper Synology at a friends on the other coast. This has ~3 versions. Sorta the backup to the first two.
You can get append only backups on backblaze with their lifecycle rules. So that can have ransomware protection too
3, 2, 1. ❤
Without implementing this, it’s a delusion that some company, regardless of the size and reputation, can be trusted to keep our data safe.
Also don’t forget to restore test, otherwise you may as well not do backups. I have a reminder for once a year to test them, not just if it works but also what the performance is just in case.
This is the part that gets me. I don’t know how to automate this. I periodically retrieve something from the backups, which, so far, has worked. That’s not really good insurance, though. Any suggests or resources, ideally for borg and/restic?
Backblaze 200% of the time.
The only thing that sucks about backblaze is that they’re not designed for enterprise. No account balances. No multi users.
It have a free service?
Well, no, but I use it for free.
Because backblaze doesn’t let you maintain an account balance, I almost had all my data get deleted one time my credit card false-positive blocked the payment (for “my protection”).
I ended up getting a credit card specifically for B2. I use it for nothing else.
Turns out some credit card companies dont charge you anything if your bill for the month is <$1. So, yeah, I accidentally get backblaze for free.
I use borgbackup to create backups. I point backups to another home computer and borgbase.com. Borg itself is an amazing tool. I think you should learn how it works even if it doesnt end up being the best fit for you.
One of few ransomware protected solutions
I’ve been using pcloud. They do one time upfront payments for ‘lifetime’ cloud storage. Catch a sale and it’s ~$160/TB. For something long term like backups it seems unbeatable. To the point I sort of don’t expect them to actually last forever, but if they last 2-3 years it’s a decent deal still.
Use rclone to upload my files, honestly not ideal though since it’s meant for file synchronisation not backups. Also they are dog slow. Downloading my 4TBs takes ~10 days.
I’ve been using rsync.net for a while now. It’s been stable, fast, and relatively inexpensive. There’s also the benefit that it’s easy to script automated backups directly to it. For more Dropbox-like functionality, I have a Nextcloud instance that uses rsync.net as external storage. It’s been great so far!
I like that I can interface with it in ways that I already understand (eg rclone, sync, sshfs).
Being able to run some commands on the server meant that I could use rclone to copy my AWS and OneDrive backups directly cloud-to-cloud.
They require you to buy a minimum of 800Gb, which for most people is an overkill
Is it? I’m genuinely asking. I haven’t seen statistics on how much storage people looking for cloud backup solutions use, but to me, anything under 1TB seems too small to be worth it, these days.
@gedaliyah If you’re not married to managed cloud services, services like rsync.net or a Hetzner storage box work very well. They require more effort, but you have complete control and can do some fun things (like using rclone’s crypt module with them). Plus rsync.net is super useful if your sources use ZFS.
Of the cloud providers, Backblaze is the one that anecdotally seems most popular.
I’m a long time user of jottacloud. It’s not really meant for 10TB+, but works great for what I need it to do.
