# BuyVM announces free backups for all 256MB+ OpenVZ plans!



## Francisco (Dec 9, 2013)

Hello everyone!

While I know we discussed charging for backups (10% - 15%), we've decided to include *free nightly backups*

for all 256MB+ OpenVZ plans.

We will be installing the nodes sometime next month and should have the upgrades to stallion in beta within the next

week or two.

Fear not fellow 128MB lovers, backups will be available for a mere *$0.10/month*, or $1.20/year extra. You're

not required to order this if you're a 128MB, but it will be available.

*What new features do backups allow?*

Users will be able to not only restore from a full week of nightly backups, they will be allowed to also take

user controlled snapshots as well as *create templates*.

Users will also be able to *mount* a backup as read-only and be able to copy whatever data they may

need out of a backup/snapshot at any time.

*Snapshots?*

Snapshots are a fantastic way to test out if an upgrade goes properly or not. It blow up on you?

No problem, roll back.

We don't have a hard set figure of how many snapshots we'll allow per VPS, but I'm favouring *3*.

*Creating Templates?*

From inside Stallion, customers will be able to create a template based off an OpenVZ of their choice.

Templates will be limited to a maximum size of 2GB each, more than enough to install even cPanel, etc.

You'll then be able to build/reinstall an OpenVZ from these templates at any time.

We don't have a hardset number in mind for how many to limit this to, but we'll probably do *10*.

Thank you everyone for your continued support!

Francisco


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## SkylarM (Dec 9, 2013)

Came for the post, stayed for the tags. #huehuehue


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## nunim (Dec 9, 2013)

Will customers be able to download their OVZ templates or snapshots?  I don't have a BuyVM but these features would probably make me buy one.


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## MannDude (Dec 9, 2013)

Francisco said:


> Fear not fellow 128MB lovers, backups will be available for a mere *$0.10/month*, or $1.20/year extra. You're
> 
> not required to order this if you're a 128MB, but it will be available.


So.... free and almost free?

Sounds good to me.


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## Francisco (Dec 9, 2013)

nunim said:


> Will customers be able to download their OVZ templates or snapshots?  I don't have a BuyVM but these features would probably make me buy one.


Not right away. We're using rsync w/ hardlinking to chop down the overall space usage. We'll probably throw some extra layers of deduplication as things progress.

I did a round about way of explaining that, but since we're not tar.gz'ing peoples filesystems, offering a backup link isn't as easy as just piping it through.

I'll likely do something similar to amazon where it'll just email/contact you with a download link once it's ready.

Templates will be much easier since those will be a tar.gz.

Francisco


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## sundaymouse (Dec 9, 2013)

Making me want to place an order right now... if maxmind doesn't suck me every time.


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## Amitz (Dec 9, 2013)

Damn, Fran, Good news! 


But update your bloody website already, it still says Buffalo on it!


<3, Amitz


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## Francisco (Dec 9, 2013)

Amitz said:


> Damn, Fran, Good news!
> 
> But update your bloody website already, it still says Buffalo on it!
> 
> <3, Amitz


Blah blah blah >_>

I got a new site on the way. We hired one of our own customers actually to do the new setup.

I'm sad because i'm out probably $1200 in previous designers that didn't "get" us. The fellow

we hired now took a few kicks to get things figured out but he's on the right path and we've

all been really happy with how it's looking.

Francisco


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## Aldryic C'boas (Dec 9, 2013)

Amitz said:


> Damn, Fran, Good news!
> 
> 
> But update your bloody website already, it still says Buffalo on it!
> ...


I don't think Fran even remembers which box the site is on anymore XD  Anyways, that's fixed now


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## Francisco (Dec 9, 2013)

Oh, and I forgot to mention.

NJ storage sometime next month as well  We're not sending a lot of nodes to start (mostly to feel out the market).

Current customers get first dibs, of course.

Francisco


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## Aldryic C'boas (Dec 9, 2013)

Francisco said:


> Oh, and I forgot to mention.
> 
> 
> NJ storage sometime next month as well  We're not sending a lot of nodes to start (mostly to feel out the market).
> ...


He forgot to mention - there is not a waiting list yet (so please don't open a ticket this early >_>), and we're not gonna do pre-pay/etc to hold a spot.  I will do a mass mail (and reply here or a new thread) when we are ready to start accepting said dibs, though


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## jarland (Dec 9, 2013)

When buyvm deadpools I quit life. That is all.


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## drmike (Dec 9, 2013)

Francisco said:


> Oh, and I forgot to mention.
> 
> 
> NJ storage sometime next month as well  We're not sending a lot of nodes to start (mostly to feel out the market).
> ...


Reserve a 250GB block in NJ in my name.  I am buying.

As for the backup cost.  Geez, so you can actually buy something for a dime these days.

Unsure how you guys pull it off.   Keep it up!


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## Aldryic C'boas (Dec 9, 2013)

drmike said:


> Unsure how you guys pull it off.   Keep it up!


We run a solid business plan, as opposed to leasing cheap gear and strong-arming our clients :3


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## vRozenSch00n (Dec 9, 2013)

@Aldryic C'boas & @Francisco is there any ETA to upgrade NJ nodes to pure SSD?


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## Francisco (Dec 9, 2013)

vRozenSch00n said:


> @Aldryic C'boas & @Francisco is there any ETA to upgrade NJ nodes to pure SSD?


No ETA yet.

The amount of power we gained in NJ isn't enough to handle the temp gear we'd need to get the SSD's in place.

We lucked out that in LV we had like 5 - 6A spare so we could handle the SSD upgrades w/o too many headaches. In NJ we only gained 3A or so.

Don't worry, NJ will get the same love soon enough 

Francisco


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## wlanboy (Dec 10, 2013)

Francisco said:


> *Snapshots!*
> 
> *Creating Templates!*


You know that you just created devops heaven?


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## Francisco (Dec 10, 2013)

wlanboy said:


> You know that you just created devops heaven?


Just need to get the word out about it then 

Francisco


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## johnlth93 (Dec 10, 2013)

"Users will also be able to *mount* a backup as read-only and be able to copy whatever data they may

need out of a backup/snapshot at any time."

This is some serious feature. Although it won't be any much useful for my business nature but someone is going to find this really useful.
 

As always +1 to fellows at buyvm ~ good job and keep it up


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## Francisco (Dec 10, 2013)

johnlth93 said:


> "Users will also be able to


*mount* a backup as read-only and be able to copy whatever data they mayneed out of a backup/snapshot at any time."

This is some serious feature. Although it won't be any much useful for my business nature but someone is going to find this really useful.

As always +1 to fellows at buyvm ~ good job and keep it up  

The mounting controls are my favourite future feature so far 

As of right now i'm just testing out restoring a backup via stallion to see how it goes.

The codes going quite fast and I expect to have the backups part in private testing this weekend.

Francisco


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## dano (Dec 10, 2013)

Cool -- good pricing and features, keep up the good work over there ya'll


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## bdtech (Dec 10, 2013)

Francisco said:


> Not right away. We're using rsync w/ hardlinking to chop down the overall space usage. We'll probably throw some extra layers of deduplication as things progress.
> 
> 
> I did a round about way of explaining that, but since we're not tar.gz'ing peoples filesystems, offering a backup link isn't as easy as just piping it through.
> ...


 so you're choosing not to use compression or dedup?


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## Francisco (Dec 10, 2013)

bdtech said:


> so you're choosing not to use compression or dedup?


Not in all deployments. NJ is a much smaller deployment so the plan right now is to just get a much bigger chassis (24 drives) and use part of it for customer VM's (for storage plans) and some for backups.

We're coding with hardlinks in mind but if ZFS proves to not demand 128GB of RAM just for the dedup tables, I'll consider it too.

The problem with ZFS is that even with an SSD for L2ARC, you still need a fairly decent amount of RAM for mapping.

Francisco


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## fixidixi (Dec 10, 2013)

Well I've just read this: Keep up the awesome


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## dano (Dec 10, 2013)

Seriously, ZFS and dedup is super memory intensive -- with only 10tb raw, a 16gb/dual L5420 machine is miserable(maybe a few hundred free mbs). No dedup, and the machine has 6-7gb free most times.


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## Francisco (Dec 10, 2013)

dano said:


> Seriously, ZFS and dedup is super memory intensive -- with only 10tb raw, a 16gb/dual L5420 machine is miserable(maybe a few hundred free mbs). No dedup, and the machine has 6-7gb free most times.


Do you have an L2ARC SSD?

Francisco


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## Francisco (Jan 15, 2014)

I'm seeking beta testers for those interested 

You're welcome to login here to check it out:

URL: http://199.19.227.70/

LOGIN: testpony

PASSWORD: demo

Once in, head over to http://199.19.227.70/vserver/4/backups and poke around. You're welcome to set a password, "touch" some files and create/restore snapshots. Please don't create large dd's as this just chugs hard on this development server.

-----------------------

KNOWN BUGS

-----------------------

- The 'max snapshots' limit is not honoured at this time

- The 'snapshots used' counter isn't accurate at all (it's just stub data for now)

- The file count statistic isn't updated once completed

- The size statistic isn't updated once completed either

- New nightly backups aren't actually being created (the cron simply isn't setup, this is intentional)

- The 'characters' counter isn't working yet (again, more stub data)

I hope to have this merged over to production by this weekend with the top bugs, as well as any other bugs you list, being fixed by then.

This revision of stallion has quite a few quirk fixes as well as additional features (namely the 'status' information always being shown). There is still a memory accounting bug pending that will be addressed during roll out.

Francisco


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## telephone (Jan 15, 2014)

Francisco said:


> -----------------------
> 
> 
> KNOWN BUGS
> ...




Forgot the 'isset()'


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## Francisco (Jan 15, 2014)

telephone said:


>


Good catch  How did I miss a count().

Keep 'em flowing!

Francisco


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## Francisco (Jan 23, 2014)

This will be public come next week 

I've got a very small list of bugs to still squash before I start nightly 'enable' blasts. It'll still take a few weeks for everyone to get enabled as I don't want to pound the poor backups node offline.

Francisco


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## mcmyhost (Jan 23, 2014)

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## Aldryic C'boas (Jan 23, 2014)

DammitFranTM.  I've brought it to his attention, he'll address this in a sec.


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## Francisco (Jan 23, 2014)

How'd I break reinstall?

I wonder if I had something from testing that i didn't copy properly.

Mind PM'ing me a screenshot? Don't post it on here for your own privacy.

Francisco


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