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I'm looking for an online backup service that allows me to rsync my backups (1-3GB of incrementals per week, 50GB in total). I currently use my hosting space on Dreamhost for this but as it's (controversially) against their TOS I want to move away from that.

I'd be interested in hearing about people's experiences backing up from a Linux computer using rsync to any of: * Amazon S3 directly (is this possible?) * Rackspace Cloud storage directly * Jungle Disk to amazon or rackspace * s3rsync to Amazon S3 (they seem a bit new) * Any other good service..

I'm also looking to pay no more than about €10 per month

thanks

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6 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

DIY really isn't that hard. I have Comcast at home and speedtest.net claims I average around 8-12mbps. Once an hour a cron job rsnapshots (rsync w/multi-day recovery capabilities) all of my commercial website customers to a wimpy little Linux box in my garage with a buttload of storage. 95% of the time there are no changes and it takes about 35 seconds total. When there are changes it normally takes longer for rsync to find them than to actually do the download.

Once a day I rsync those changes to another local server. Belt and suspenders, don't you know?

I sleep better knowing I can rebuild a customer's site in a matter of an hour or so.

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I've been wanting to do this. Since you do it, let me ask you: Do you need a dynamic DNS Domain name to accomplish it? – Frank V Apr 13 '10 at 23:47
Sorry for the long delay, I don't look at SU as often as I do SO. If the rsync is initiated from the machine on the dynamic IP, then it doesn't really matter. If it is being initiated to the dynamic IP, then I recommend using dyndns.org (or similar) so you have a host name that maps to the dynamically moving machine. Mostly I initiate from my garage server to a static IP so the whole thing is moot. – Peter Rowell Apr 28 '10 at 1:46
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up vote 2 down vote

In the past I've used bqbackup and found their service to be quick and reliable, there are other similar services out there too such as rsync.net. Services such as these are specifically geared around providing rsync and similar services for backups.

I currently "host" my own backups though, as I have enough resource dotted around such that a server in one location can hold backups for others and vice-versa. If you want to try DIY, you could no doubt find a VPS somewhere that gives the space you need within your budget if you want to manage it yourself. Search places like WHT's VPS offers area for a selection of possible providers then hunt for reviews of them to make sure they aren't fly-by-night operations. Another thing to note when using rsync is that if you are syncing a large directory structure (large being in terms of the number of files, not their over-all size) rsync can consume a fair chunk of memory, so don't get a VPS that has too little RAM (though for most cases 128Mb will be plenty you don't do nothing (or very little) else with the VM, for example you just install the minimum Debian/Stable with rsync+ssh).

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+1 - Just a comment though on cross-backupping servers. Even better: a story on why that could be a bad idea: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avsim#Hacking_case – mac Nov 30 '09 at 14:33
There is a way to mitigate that. My main servers all have different passwords/keys and do not have access to log into each other directly so you can't hack one from the others. They each push the backup data by rsync to an intermediate VPS then pull down the stuff, again by rsync, that they are storing for the other machines. The intermediate machine has no passwords/keys for the other servers so it isn't a central hacking opportunity either. If a machine is compromised and sends a bad backup before I notice the problem, yesterday's backup will still be fine as will last week's and so on. – David Spillett Nov 30 '09 at 14:42
Thanks, however the problem with all of these is price. I currently pay $10/month for plenty of bandwidth and space (so far as they don't close my acct.). rsync.net and the VPS solutions I looked at are well over that for the bare minimum of storage I need. bqbackup is a bit more reasonable. Still the Amazon/Rackspace cloud related stuff seems a lot cheaper, has anyone had good experiences with that and Linux+rsync? – Tim Nov 30 '09 at 15:30
DreamHost (and most other providers like them) can be that cheap because all their resource (space, bandwidth, CPU power, ...) is massively oversold in order to be competitive in the hope that all but a few of their users will use no more than a fraction of what they could. Good backup and VPS providers can't oversell (or at least not nearly that much) so will never be competitive in those terms. You are simply not comparing like-for-like there. Personally my gut feeling is that I'm not sure I would want my backups on "the cloud", but others may have more to say for/against that. – David Spillett Nov 30 '09 at 17:02
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up vote 1 down vote

JungleDisk won't do it directly with rsync, but their software does provide the same basic functionality of backing up only changed portions of files. If you've looked at it in the past this used to be called JungleDisk Plus and was an added-cost service beyond the base software license; they now just charge a slightly higher cost per month with no upfront cost. They have a $2/month plan that's backup-only and targeted at basic users (Grandma) and a $3/month plan that includes network mapped drives and other features.

Since you're probably in Europe based on your pricing, it's worth noting that JungleDisk offers 3 options for file storage (all include the first 5GB "free") - Amazon S3 in the US for $0.15/GB/month, Amazon S3 Europe for $0.18/GB/month and Rackspace US for $0.15/GB/Month. Both Amazon options charge for bandwidth, Rackspace does not. If you're very price sensitive, Rackspace US would be the way to go, otherwise Amazon Europe may be faster for you.

With Rackspace storage, you'd be paying around $9.75/month total; with Amazon EU you'd be paying $12-13/month depending on how much data you were moving each week and your initial upload would cost around $5. Subtract around $1.50 for Amazon US.

JungleDisk also runs on Windows/Linux/Mac.

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A couple of other notes: JungleDisk has forums where some of these issues are discussed; Amazon appears to have just lowered pricing on their EU(Ireland) storage to match the US, plus inbound transfers are free. – fencepost Dec 9 '09 at 5:29
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up vote 1 down vote

I'm using s3rsync.com to rsync to my s3 bucket. It work excellent. The price is very competitive.

Dado

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up vote 0 down vote

DreamHost offers 50GB worth of personal backup space.

http://wiki.dreamhost.com/Personal_Backup

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up vote 0 down vote

GoGrid supports RSYNC and charges $0.15 per gig per month with no transfer charges.

http://wiki.gogrid.com/wiki/index.php/Cloud_Storage:Cloud_Storage

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