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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Nobody that uses Wasabi?
Too expensive
When I’ve signed up was the cheaper. I’ve just checked and it’s $6.99/TB/month and Backblaze B2 is actually cheaper ($6/TB/month). Are there other differences that you know of? There must be since everyone is using Baclblaze.
I prefer my local storage. Can’t vouch for any cloud storage.
Upside of Wasabi to my infrastructure: It’s compatible with Veeam.
I’m still looking for a case that can hold a Pi and a 3.5” drive that I can set up at someone else’s house.
Tape/glue the Pi in the case to the HDD.
Done.
I’ve thought about gutting an old toaster, like for toasting bread, to house a raspberry pi and instead of slices of bread you can stick harddrives into the slots. Two bays. The prime motivation is just to be able to say that I can run Linux on a toaster. Next step would be running Linux on a dead badger I guess.
I would hope someone has made a toaster drive dock by now, missed opportunity
Yes but can you run Doom on a dead badger
I’m getting this set up at my parents’. Just gotta remind them not to touch the box!
For inspiration, take a look at the Nextcloud Devices - just for the hardware ideas.
I’m still running a Nextcloud Box (with the original Western Digital drive) and it’s fine for my needs.
Restic (or rustic) and Hetzner storage box 🤩
I use iDrive, 20TB for a couple hundred bucks a year. I’ve not found anything that compares to that in pricing. Backblaze I think it’s about $1600 a year for the same storage and the major cloud providers are much higher than that. I view cloud backups as the the last line of defense in the backup strategy. So all the nice features that most providers offer at a significant price increase just don’t make sense to me as I won’t use them. I have the iDrive Linux app running it detects what’s new in the monitored directories and shoves them up to the cloud hopefully to never be needed.
I like S3 because I only pay for what I use and it has auto storage tiering.
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
After some research on here and reddit about 6 months so, I settled on Borgbase and its been pretty good. I also manually save occasionally to proton drive but you’re right to give up on that as a solution!
The hardest part was choosing the backup method and properly setting up Borg or restic on my machine properly, especially with docker and databases. I have ended up with adding db backup images to each container with an important db, saving to a specific folder. Then that and all the files are backed up by restic to an attached external drive at well as borgbase. This happens at a specific time in the morning and found a restic action to stop all docker containers first, back them up, then spin them back up. I am find the guides that I used if it’s helpful to you.
I also checked my backups a few times and found a few small problems I had to fix. I got the message from order users several times that your backups are useless unless you regularly test them.
Local storage + a Veeam VBR VM
I use Storj, it’s been my favorite for years.
Do you mine? Always sounded like the best option if you dont have a friend in another georegion to replicate-to
I did for a few years when the network started, but it became increasingly difficult to do so from a residential IP with slow upload speeds (cable internet).
I use 2 matching Synology NAS systems. 1 backs up to the other daily. Then one of them backs up to Synology C2 weekly.
I use borgbackup, with daily backup to borgbase.
At some point I want to set up a distributed file system between multiple locations as both a backup target and also a network share with automatic snapshots or some other undelete mechanism, but I still need to get the hardware for that and the current setup works well
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.
I use restic with a wrapper script to automate it on all of my machines. The backend storage can be anything that speaks S3, so B2, or iDrive would both work. I currently use Storj for my backend. It’s globally distributed storage, so no single point of failure geographically and it’s cheap. Backblaze is also a great company, but I’ve grown a little skeptical since they went public.
I’ve been using Restic to Backblaze B2.
I don’t really trust B2 that much (I think it is mostly a single-DC kind of storage) but it is reasonably priced and easy to use. Plus as long as their failures aren’t correlated with mine it should be fine.
I quadrupal vote for this combination.
You could trust B2 more; maybe dig into their structure. They’re solid, and not only that they provide an awesome service with their yearly HD failure rate evaluations, in which they describe the structure of their data centers.
I’m terms of NPS, I’m on their side. Unless something comes out and shady business practices, I’m brand loyal to B2. Been with then for years, and love the service, pricing, and company.
I think it depends on your needs. IIUC their storage is “single location”. Like a very significant natural disaster could take it offline or maybe even lose it. Something like S3 or Google Cloud Storage (depending on which durability you select) is multi-location (as in significantly distinct geographical regions). So still very likely that you will never lose any data, but in the extreme cases potentially you could.
If I was storing my only copy of something it would matter a lot more (although even then you are best to store with multiple providers for social reasons, not just technical) but for a backup it is fine.
Enabling multi DC redundancy is really easy though. The other providers you mentioned may have it by default, but they’re also a lot more expensive.
I love that they let me pick my own redundancy strategy, without forcing me to pay for theirs
I think I see what you’re saying.
B2 has multiple data centers around the world - at least 3 in the US and 1 in EU, that I know of. If you want your data replicated, you have to create buckets in multiple locations and connect them for replication, which they’ll do for you (the replication).
If you’re saying that they don’t automatically store multiple copies of your data in multiple locations for you, for free, you’re right. But they do have multiple data centers located around the world, and you can create multiple buckets and configure them for automatic replication so you have redundancy. You have to pay for the storage at each replicated location, though. If you want a bucket in Sacramento, it’ll cost you those pennies. If you want it replicated to Rest on, you’ll pay double the pennies. If you want it also replicated to Amsterdam, triple the pennies.
I don’t think it’s fair to say that they’re single location that could have a natural disaster and you therefore lose your storage. It’s only like that if you set it up that way, and it’s pretty trivial to set up global replication - it just costs more.
That’s true. And I’m not saying B2 is bad, it is just something that you should be aware of.
Their automatic replication isn’t quite as seamless as GCS or S3 though. For example deletes aren’t replicated so you will need a cleanup strategy. Plus once you 2x or 3x the price B2 isn’t as competitive on price. My point is that it is very easy to compare apples to oranges looking at cloud storage providers and it is important to be aware.
For me B2 is a great fit and I am happy with it, but I don’t wan to mislead peope.
Great clarifications!
