# How are you handling backups?



## clarity (Aug 13, 2013)

How are you guys handling backups? I am looking for some new ideas. We all know rsync and stuff, but I am really wanting a script that can sftp over data to another server. I am a tutorial following kind of guy, and I can't seem to find anything that comes across as good to me anymore. Do you guys have any links?

Thanks.


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## fusa (Aug 13, 2013)

We use Bacula for this. Easy incremental and full backups on multiple volumes / servers. 

This services also pulls the data from your server, so there is no login information on your web/mail server.


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## serverian (Aug 13, 2013)

R1soft and Bacula or duplicity.


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## clarity (Aug 13, 2013)

fusa said:


> We use Bacula for this. Easy incremental and full backups on multiple volumes / servers.
> 
> This services also pulls the data from your server, so there is no login information on your web/mail server.


How hard is bacula to configure?


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## happel (Aug 13, 2013)

Daily (nightly) backups for the past month using rsnapshot. I like rsnapshot for being pull based. In the event of a security breach of a production system the backups are still safe .


I'm currently looking into zetaback for my zfs storage pools.


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## MannDude (Aug 13, 2013)

Made locally, also rsynced every 2 hours to remote server where I've got an archive. Also backed up from there to my PC occasionally.

I've got an R1SoftLicense, haven't used it yet though. So will do R1SoftBackups too.


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## texteditor (Aug 13, 2013)

lftp and some shoddy scripting


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## drmike (Aug 13, 2013)

Out of curiosity, why the SFTP specification/want?

Rsync continues to be the way I advise backups for most things.  Duplicity and many other solutions are using rsync underneath.

Where isn't rsync cutting it for you now?  (I know the commandline options can be a pain at times to perfect)


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## NodeBytes (Aug 13, 2013)

Crashplan backing up to a backupsy VPS as well as my local (home) server. Each container on my dedi backs up each day, some are synced manually from within the OS itself.


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## drmike (Aug 13, 2013)

bcarlsonmedia said:


> Crashplan backing up to a backupsy VPS as well as my local (home) server. Each container on my dedi backs up each day, some are synced manually from within the OS itself.


How is Backupsy going for you?  I just took the plunge and signed up.


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## clarity (Aug 13, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> Out of curiosity, why the SFTP specification/want?
> 
> 
> Rsync continues to be the way I advise backups for most things. Duplicity and many other solutions are using rsync underneath.
> ...


I guess I don't really have a want for sftp. I would love something like backuppc that was lighter weight.


I like rsnapshot a lot. I wish it could push backups though instead of the pulling only. I guess I could mount a remote directory for it to work, but I would worry about performance that way.


I am also thinking about signing up for backupsy, but I want to use it for an own cloud instance. The I have to find something to back that up!


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## BlueVM (Aug 13, 2013)

Backups? What backups? Unmanaged providers offer backups?

We'll probably have a free backup system in Feathur shortly... enough for 1 or 2 backups per user... probably with a limit of 10 - 30 GB of data.


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## HalfEatenPie (Aug 13, 2013)

BlueVM said:


> Backups? What backups? Unmanaged providers offer backups?
> 
> We'll probably have a free backup system in Feathur shortly... enough for 1 or 2 backups per user... probably with a limit of 10 - 30 GB of data.


If I recall *KuJoe* does ridiculous amounts of backups (three layers deep) of each server.  I know several who maintain backups (including ourselves) for worst-case-scenario disasters.  RamNode had an issue recently where their nodes were compromised and most of them were trashed (requiring a reinstall and complete loss of client data).  Fortunately they had backups of most of the nodes and (while took some time) were able to restore many of these backups.

I feel that being unmanaged doesn't exempt us from backups.  Now we won't pull backups fora single person (that's not how it's setup for us anyways) but if/when a major disaster happens we should be able to have everything back up in a day or two.  

In my opinion, backups are a great way (even for unmanaged providers) to save face when disaster happens.


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## drmike (Aug 13, 2013)

dclardy said:


> I guess I don't really have a want for sftp. I would love something like backuppc that was lighter weight.


Let's see --- backuppc -- this? http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/info.html

Looks like some really nifty features in it.  Also looks to have a good bit of overhead to do everything it is doing.  Way more than rsync by itself.

"BackupPC is written in Perl and extracts backup data via SMB using Samba, tar over ssh/rsh/nfs, or rsync."



dclardy said:


> I like rsnapshot a lot. I wish it could push backups though instead of the pulling only. I guess I could mount a remote directory for it to work, but I would worry about performance that way.


Give SSHFS a look   I use it alot to overcome all sorts of oddball issues with goofy bandwidth.  Simply, it allows you to map director/filesystem via SSH over any network.  It does create overhead, but no more than any other technology like SSH.  

With SSHFS you can push or pull data.  

Rsnapshot looks interesting also     Any rsync based solution that allows for a base full backup and incrementals and/or deduping, is good.  Especially true where you are backing up full desktop installations.     OS installs are highly duplicative from one user to next.

Good thread though. I like these.  Helps expose new/unknown solutions that are out there.


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## shawn_ky (Aug 13, 2013)

Still using SnapBack2, http://www.perusion.com/misc/Snapback2/snapback2.html Tahoe for some others and OwnCloud. OwnCloud to a personal pc then to NAS.


Did a restore the other day just to ensure it worked well... No issues. Very pleased.


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## NodeBytes (Aug 14, 2013)

@buffalooed - They're great. I have been with them since before they officially launched (beta testing) and early on they had a raid controller die so I lost my entire VPS at which point I left for about a month and then I went back and tried again.... haven't looked back since. @serverian is doing well and Backupsy is great!


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## drmike (Aug 14, 2013)

The creator of rsync really deserves some massive recognition.  A lifetime achievement award.  Rsync is used in so many things we all take for granted.


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## happel (Aug 14, 2013)

dclardy said:


> I like rsnapshot a lot. I wish it could push backups though instead of the pulling only. I guess I could mount a remote directory for it to work, but I would worry about performance that way.


Any specific reason you want to push backups?


Pull has a several advantages:


- more secure


- easier to monitor


- can be managed from a central location


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## Hosting55 (Aug 14, 2013)

I use r1soft for save our webservers data. So great product, easy to recover. For our office PCs we use duplicati. Duplicati backups our data to Amazon S3 incrementally. Also I use duplicati for my personal needs, backup all important data to my google drive.


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## clarity (Aug 14, 2013)

buffalooed said:


> Let's see --- backuppc -- this? http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/info.html
> 
> Looks like some really nifty features in it.  Also looks to have a good bit of overhead to do everything it is doing.  Way more than rsync by itself.
> 
> "BackupPC is written in Perl and extracts backup data via SMB using Samba, tar over ssh/rsh/nfs, or rsync."


That is exactly the one. It is pretty!



happel said:


> Any specific reason you want to push backups?
> 
> 
> Pull has a several advantages:
> ...


The server that I was planning to backup to has 128MB of ram, and rsync sometimes fails due to memory issues from creating the file list. If I get a backupsy box, this should not be an issue.


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## mikho (Aug 15, 2013)

at most I use raid 5, most servers I have uses single disks setups

I like living on the edge.


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## happel (Aug 15, 2013)

mikho said:


> at most I use raid 5, most servers I have uses single disks setups
> 
> 
> I like living on the edge.


Are you trolling or what? 

Raid != backup


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## Damian (Aug 15, 2013)

We cross-rsnapshot our servers to other servers in the same datacenter on a daily basis, then to an external site on a weekly basis. It's a bit heavy on disk i/o, but not *that* bad. 

I keep looking at customer-driven incremental backup but can't justify the resources or cost for budget services. Therefore, our only offering is whole-node restoration, which we make known to the customer up front with http://ipxcore.com/auptos/#backups even though no one reads the AUP/TOS.....


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## mikho (Aug 15, 2013)

happel said:


> Are you trolling or what?
> 
> 
> Raid != backup


I know raid != backup but thats as close as I get to backups. Well... Come to think about it, I do have an emailed copy ofmsome mysql databases somewhere. (Forgot what account I sent it to). 
My customers data is another thing. But they all run windows environments so their backup solutions are not really usefull here.


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## ICPH (Aug 24, 2013)

I dont have second server so im doing manual backups only 

mean i tar important folders, move tar to www directory and upload it a free web storage (mega.co.nz)


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