I have a server running Debian with 24 TB of storage. I would ideally like to back up all of it, though much of it is torrents, so only the ones with low seeders really need backed up. I know about the 321 rule but it sounds like it would be expensive. What do you do for backups? Also if anyone uses tape drives for backups I am kinda curious about that potentially for offsite backups in a safe deposit box or something.
TLDR: title.
Edit: You have mentioned borg and rsync, and while borg looks good, I want to go with rsync as it seems to be more actively maintained. I would like to also have my backups encrypted, but rsync doesn’t seem to have that built in. Does anyone know what to do for encrypted backups?
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Well, I’m just starting with serious backups, AFAIK you only need to backup the data which you can’t replicate.
Low seeded torrents are just hard to get, but not impossible. Personal photos, your notes, any other files generated by you are the ones which need backups.
Ideally you want to backup everything that you didn’t explicitly exclude since otherwise there is always something you forgot.
Well, I have my personal data in a specific folder, everything there is backed up.
General media is in another one, which isn’t included.
I have my BD/DVD/CD collection backed up to S3 Glacier. It’s incredibly cheap, offsite, and they worry about the infrastructure. The amount of Hard drive and infrastructure space you’ll need to back up nearly that amount will cost you the about the same give or take. Yes it’ll cost a bit in the event of a catastrophic restore, but if I have something happen at the house, at least I have an offsite backup.
How much does Glacier cost you? Last time I checked, some hosts had warm storage for around the same price, at least during Black Friday or New Year sales.
Short answer: figure out how much of that is actually irreplaceable and then find a friend or friends who’d be willing to set aside some of their storage space for your backups in exchange for you doing the same.
Tailscale makes the networking logistics incredibly simple and then you can do the actual backups however you see fit.
I backup my /home folder on my PC to my NAS using restic (used to use borg, but restic is more flexible). I backup somewhat important data to an external SSD on a weekly basis and very important data to cloud storage on a nightly basis. I don’t backup my *arr media at all (unless you count the automated snapshots on my NAS), as it’s not really important to me and can simply be redownloaded in most cases.
So I don’t and wouldn’t apply the 321 rule to all data as it’s simply too expensive for the amount of data I have and it’d take months to upload with my non-fiber internet connection. But you should definitely apply it to data that’s important to you.
I have just been using Borg with a Hetzner Storagebox as the target. That has the advantage of being off-site and not using up a lot of space since it deduplicates. It also encrypts the backup. It might take a while for the initial backup at 24TB though depending on your connection.
Shit I’ve never heard of Hetzner but their pricing makes de-Googling all my decades of family photos a viable option! Thanks!
…until they change their prices. Always make sure you have a local copy and a way out
Damn never heard of them looks great. Is there any catch or is it like a small company that might go out of business in a few years? I still haven’t had to backup more then 4tb but once I do get up to those numbers they might be the best option compared to offsite hard drives like I been doing
They are anything but small. They are probably one of the biggest German hosting companies out there.
is it like a small company that might go out of business in a few years?
Hetzner is one of the largest hosting companies in the world.
As mentioned already, Hetzner is a very big Hoster in Germany. I am a customer since nearly 15 years now and in all that time they also rised the prices only once for the package I use (and I think it was only recently in 2023 or so where it went from 4,90€ to 5,39€). Also their Storage Box seems to be not only one of the cheapest out there I have seen, but as far as I remember, you do not have to pay for the traffic if you want to restore your data, like it is with other hosters. Also they had a good service, were responsive if I opened a Ticket in the past and I can not remember if I had ever problems with the service I use (Web Hosting package).
Can confirm that there is 0 ingress or egress fees, since this is not an S3 container storage server, but a simple FTP server that also has a borg&restic module. So it simply doesnt fall into the e/ingress cost model.
Anything I can download again doesn’t get backup, but it sits on a RAID-1. I am ok at losing it due to carelessness but not due to a broken disk. I try to be carefully when messing with it and that’s enough, I can always download again.
Anything like photos notes personal files and such gets backedup via restic to a disk mounted to the other side of the house. Offsite backup i am thinking about it, but not really got to it yet. Been lucky all this time.
From 10tb of stuff, the totality of my backupped stuff amount to 700gb. Since 90% of are photos, the backup size is about 700gb too. The actually part of that 700gb that changes (text files, documents…) amount to negligible. The photos never change, at most grow a bit over time.
For offsite I backup to aws Glacier. Cheap to store expensive to retrieve. When the house burns down I’ll still have the photos somewhere and at that point the cost is negligible compared to losing them since it really is worst case scenario.
For offsite I backup to aws Glacier. Cheap to store expensive to retrieve. When the house burns down I’ll still have the photos somewhere and at that point the cost is negligible compared to losing them since it really is worst case scenario.
I use rclone, which is essentially rsync for cloud services. It supports encrypion out of the box.
It depends on the value of the data. Can you afford to replace them? Is there anything priceless on there (family photos etc)? Will the time to replace them be worth it?
If its not super critical, raid might be good enough, as long as you have some redundancy. Otherwise, categorizing your data into critical/non-critical and back it up the critical stuff first?
RAID is not backup. Many failure sources from theft over electrical issues to water or fire can affect multiple RAID drives equally, not to mention silent data corruption or accidental deletions.
Yeah…I’ve never totally lost my main storage and had to recover from backups. But on a number of occasions, I have been able to recover something that was inadvertently wiped. RAID doesn’t provide that.
Also, depending upon the structure of your backup system, if someone compromises your system, they may not be able to compromise your backups.
If you need continuous uptime in the event of a drive failure, RAID is an entirely reasonable thing to have. It’s just…not a replacement for backups.
Oh, all my drives are RAID too, mostly for the convenience of being able to use them while I order a replacement for a failed drive and not having to restore from backup once I get that.
Its not, but if the value of the data is low, its good enough. There is no point backing up linux isos, but family photos definitely should be properly backed up according to 3-2-1.
I use Kopia to backup all personal data (nextcloud, immich, configs, etc) daily to another disk in the same server and also to backblaze B2. Its not proper 321 but feels good enough. I dont backup downloadable content because its expensive
Important stuff (about 150G) is synced to all my machines and a b2 Backblaze bucket.
I have a rented seed box for those low seeder torrents.
The stuff I can download again is only on a mirrored lvm pool with an lvmcache. I don’t have any redundancy for my monerod data which is on an nvme.
I’m moving towards an immutable OS with 30 days of snapshots. While not the main reason, it does push one to practicing better sync habits.
I have a storage VPS with HostHatch - 10TB for $10/month. That pricing was from a Black Friday sale a few years ago. They may not offer it that cheap again, but it’s worth keeping an eye out for their sales. They had something similar last year but double the price, which is still a good deal.
I use Borgbackup to back up the data to the HostHatch VPS. The most important data has a second copy stored with pcloud - I’ve got a lifetime 2TB storage plan with them. I know lifetime accounts are kinda sketchy which is why it’s just a secondary backup and not the primary one.
I don’t have any “disposable” files like torrents though. All the stuff I back up are things like servers that run my websites and email, family photos, CDs I’ve ripped myself, etc. I’ve only got a few TB total.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters Git Popular version control system, primarily for code NAS Network-Attached Storage PSU Power Supply Unit RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage SSD Solid State Drive mass storage VPS Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)
6 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 10 acronyms.
[Thread #642 for this sub, first seen 30th Mar 2024, 20:45] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
- What backup service do you use? - Lemmy.world
- What are your backup solutions? - Lemmy.world
- How do you guys back up your server? - Lemmy.world
- How do you backup things to your server? - Lemmy.world
- How to store backups? - Lemmy.world
- How do you backup your data? - Lemmy.world
- Need help with a backup solution - Lemmy.World
do you use a COW fs?, using snapshots could be helpful
Just want to note here:
Snapshots are NOT a backup.
While btrfs is quite stable corruption/disk failure can always happen. Bcachefs had a little opsie daisy that caused some FS level corruption. Snapshots won’t help in this case.
Snapshots are great for quick restoration on user error.
bcachefs is very early tho, and the corruption was reversible becuase of the COW nature, but i agree
Helpful yes, but far from enough. It only helps in some scenarios (like accidental deletes, malware), but not in many others (filesystem corruption, multiple disks dying at once due to e.g. lightning, a bad PSU or a fire).
Offsite backup is a must for data you want to keep.
I put the prndl in r and just goose it
