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Ask Slashdot: Network Backup Solution Out of the Box?
First time accepted submitter file terminator writes "I want to buy a network drive for home usage, and am looking for something that would allow for secure and encrypted remote backups over the Internet to a second network drive, preferably advanced enough that all drive content does not have to be transmitted every time. The solution may come as a pair of network drives, and two-way synching would actually be a plus. The drives would be behind respective NATs and setup must allow connecting to any target port. The solution should be readily available (no obscure/local brands/solutions) and not unreasonably expensive. Does anyone have any recommendations for a full out of the box solution?"
I tried to roll my own for like forever, and eventually just gave up and went for SpiderOak:
https://spideroak.com/
It can be configured to do sync, backup, or something in between. Probably not exactly what you are looking for but perhaps worth a look none the less.
.: Max Romantschuk
DropBox with local caching and multiple PCs. You do have multiple PCs, don't you? If you don't, GTFO.
http://www.dropbox.com/
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Buy two USB externals. Backup to both, encrypting it if you wish. Take one offsite and store it in a locked file cabinet. This is more secure than over-the-wire sync'ing.
"preferably advanced enough..." "readily available (no obscure/local brands/solutions)..." "not unreasonably expensive" It's going to be hard to match all three of those requirements. Remember the triangle - Scope, Quality, Cost - choose two.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
Over ssh, did this with a couple linksys routers years ago.
No sir I dont like it.
http://www.backblaze.com/
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/09/02/138209/Build-Your-Own-28M-Petabyte-Disk-Array-For-117k
"it just works".
there's no place like ~
I've switched from Jungledisk and bought a 4 year subscription of CrashPlan and it works pretty well. It is very unobtrusive working in the background on Linux. The application updates itself automatically and is pretty well-designed.
Of course, if you have truly sensitive data such as trade secrets or patient records you should never rely on any claims such companies make about their proprietary encryption / security.
Crashplan is free for home users who back up to "friends". All you need to do is register the computers as friends and have them back up onto each-other.
http://www.crashplan.com/
I'm not affilitated with Crashplan. I'm just a happy end-user.
Barracuda has a Disk-to-Disk-to-Cloud backup server. They recently introduced a new feature that allows you to use a second Barracuda at a remote site instead of their cloud services. The network backup sends deltas instead of the entire backup set. It's not free (or cheap), but it will do exactly what you want.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Syncback is great, you need to network your stuff together separately, but it will copy the minimum amount of files for you to speed up your backups.
http://www.2brightsparks.com/
We use it, works great, we use intranet not internet though, but that's just a networking setup deal I shouldn't have to explain.
Norton Ghost is another one, it goes on sale on newegg sometimes for dirt cheap and isn't that expensive to begin with, might be worth looking into, it's getting better, but I'm not a fan of their interface.
Never use the phrase "full out-of-box solution" and "not unreasonably expensive" in close proximity to one another.
Even just saying "out-of-box solution" is to salesweasels what homogenized fish guts are to sharks...
If you're willing to forgo something out of the box, look at Unison (http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/). It's like rsync but does bi-directional synchronization.
If you want to do block level replication (which would inherently only transfer the data that's changed), you could look at GlusterFS or DRBD. They both support asynchronous replication - though you can't do bidirectional synchronization with that.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
Easy to use client, you can backup to a local drive and any internet connected machine where you can install the client and have it trust your key, and you can pay the professionals a fairly small annual fee if you wish to have them manage a remote copy for you. I haven't used it myself as my Mozy subscription renewed for two years just before the new pricing went into effect but I plan to install it on both my brothers computers and have two offsite copies of my data in another year or so.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
~$ rsync -az --progress --size-only from_where_/* to_your_network_server:/your_backup_folder/
iTx Technologies: Open source development in Montreal
>>enterprise ready Which really means that you will need the skill of an enterprise linux admin to be ready to set it up. You'll spend all weekend trying to set it up, maybe get it up and running and do a first backup. Then as you are still banging your head against the wall trying to get all the features to work, you'll realize its just easier to use ssh, rsync, and a cron job.
Time Machine and Time Capsule
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
I use rsync-backup to do exactly that. Setting everything up to backup my Linux box, starting from scratch, took me about 3 hours, and that included reading the documentation. The thing works remarkably well, and its capabilities are outstanding. Once you have it setup correctly, you can forget about backing up until you need to recover files.
Synology makes (IMHO) the best SOHO NAS products. Their latest management console (3.2) supports off-site encrypted backup. They are on the expensive side but their products and support are top notch.
Try http://www.crashplan.com/ You can either pay to backup to their servers, otherwise you can backup between different computers running the client. Supports Windows / Mac / Linux / Solaris. If you are paranoid, you can setup a Solaris box with ZFS and run it on that. Also look at http://www.nexenta.org/ for a nice Solaris platform to make a NAS. rad
Vital preliminary questions:
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
How about Drobo or Cavalry, why not that with cron + rsync?
You can't handle the truth.
http://xkcd.com/538/
The alt-text is the important part of this comic; "Actual actual reality: nobody would care about his secrets"
Bacula is a good network backup solution. Check it out at http://www.bacula.org/
Not my experience, Bacula is simple. I set it up after one hour of reading and couple hours of work the first time. then did exercises of various types of backups and restores. Then later in the week installed it at client with eight servers who has been using it successfully ever since, including some important restores after some massive employee mistakes wiped out large chunks of data.
Depending on what your idea of "cheap" is, these aren't unreasonably priced.
The smaller models might work for home use. Unfortunately, features on the low-end models are ala-carte - so CDP to CDP syncing/off-site backup needs to be purchased separately.
They support Windows/Mac OS/Linux.
-ted
I use rsync between a pair of ReadyNAS NVXes. I make backups to the local one and let rsync take care of the rest. Not all of the ReadyNAS line supports rsync over SSH but this model does.
You want backups. 7zip does this.
You want encrypted backups. 7zip does this.
You want sequential/differential/whatever backup files instead of full backups each time. 7zip does this.
You want to store the backup on a network drive. SFTP/SSH/Whatever does this.
You want to sync the drive contents to another drive on the internet. SFTP/SSH/Whatever does this.
You want the transfer to be secure. SFTP/SSH/Whatever does this.
You want to schedule the jobs to run automatically. Thinking For 5 Seconds reveals how.
You want to transfer only the changes. Thinking For 5 Seconds reveals how.
You want a network drive that is NAT accessible and port-designatable. Thinking For 5 Seconds finds you one.
A simple 7z line will handle all your backup needs.
A simple xcopy/rsync/robocopy/whatever line will handle all the file moving.
A simple sftp/ssh/whatever line will handle the transfer to the remote drive.
A simple batch/cron job will schedule it to run automagically.
My LAN consists of two PCs, mine and my wife's. We are networked through a Netgear router that also connects us to a cable modem for broadband Internet. We have no network drive as such, merely having access to selected parts of each other's hard drives.
I do the backups for both of us, using the Windows XP backup tool. The backups reside on our own hard drives for use in restoring files we might have deleted or incorrectly updated.
I transfer copies of my wife's backups to my own hard drive. I use a freeware version of PGP to encrypt and digitally sign the backup files, both mine and my wife's. I then use Eraser to destroy the unencrypted copies of my wife's backups on my hard drive since such copies remain on her PC. Finally, I move the encrypted backups to a portable hard drive that I normally keep remote from the PCs.
In case a disaster happens to our PCs, copies of my PGP public and private keys and their passphrases are stored in a safe deposit box at a bank.
I have used a pair of QNAP TS-109s (older model) to do this - they can use whatever ports you want & they can be set to rsync on whatever schedule you like. According to this: http://www.qnap.com/images/products/comparison/Comparison_NAS.html the TS-112s will do everything you want, & newegg has them for $160, otherwise the TS-119P+ (can take 2.5" or 3.5" drives) is $250 or so. You need to add the drives. Their web interface is pretty nice, and mine are still going strong after 3+ years.
... Google. Or Yahoo. Or some other search engine. Because all you are going to get here are a bunch of disconnected and contradicting suggestions and will still have to look stuff up yourself to figure out what you want to do.
Stop being so damn lazy and expecting other people to do your work for you.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Synology seconded; I've never had a hiccup and their pro-grade units are fast. For Macs we use ChronoSync to handle the incremental backups.
I use All-Way sync. Every machine I build has 2 hard drives in it, not in a RAID. The second drive is only used for backup. The sync app moves data from my important directories every night to the second drive, and every once in a while when I feel like it's needed they also sync across to another machines backup drive in the house. I also keep a drive at a friends house for my really important data and every once in a while copy to that too. It's fairly simple, it works well, and I haven't lost important data in years.
Depends on what you define as "unreasonably expensive", but this outfit : Synctus will ship you a pair (or cloud) of pre-configured self-syncing, NAT traversing NAS boxes.
I met the guy who sells them at a geek social and he knows his stuff ; if you know enough, sure, you can produce an equally functional setup for lower hardware costs, but if your time is valuable the price is probably within the bounds of "reasonable" given that it includes the hardware, software, and service.
Be careful about where you leave the disk when transporting it offsite. Leaving it in the passenger seat of your car while you stop for food is less secure than over the wire.
... by a company named Singly might be of interest to you. It's called the locker project.
rsync is BI-WINNING and powered by tiger's blood. It could bang seven gram rocks every day.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I really like CrashPlan.com, runs in Java, compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux (I run it just fine in Ubuntu). It backs up from any computer to any computer or to cloud, or to a friend using CrashPlan (using a code). Best of all, it's free to use the program without a plan with CrashPlan. And, the plans themselves are pretty attractive.
It's the quickest way to create an entire web of backups, and has many advanced archival features, heavy duty encryption, compression, sync by changes to files just like rsync, deduplication, and keep dated copies of files by minute, hour, day, week, month and year, and a timed remove deleted files.
The interface is extremely simple, and every client acts as a master control. It's the best I've tried in its class, and I went with it even after getting approval to spend $4000 on backup software. Not that other packages can't do it, but the complexity went to 0 with this package, and does exactly what I needed. It also works great with NAS mounted drives as backup destinations.
I8-D
I use this model at home, its great. I have no idea why people are so eager to spend $$$ to keep their crap out in a cloud. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822108065
^^ Roll your own and make it do exactly what you need it to do.
Or mess around with this: http://www.backup-manager.org/
If you are running a *Nix-based OS, there are some cool things you can do with rsync and hard-links to backup your machines. I have personally used this method, and have resurrected dead machines to new, bare metal in about an hour (depending upon how much data there is, of course). You can tunnel rsync through SSH to solve the security problem across the Internet, and you could write the data to encrypted volumes on the backup drives, if you want to make sure the data stays secure.
If you are running Windows, you won't be able to bring back the OS and installed programs if the hardware dies, but you can still use Cygwin and rsync to backup your data, at least.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
I realize I've posted already but I failed to mention a key aspect.
To this date, across more than a decade of Windows network administration, I have yet to discover a NAS device that I trust. The manufacturer's goal is typically to make it as cheap as possible to create the largest profit margin, with the expectation that the consumer will just buy a new one when it fails I also greatly dislike external hard drives for the same reason, though I own a pair of 'portable' hard drives which I find far less flaky (it's also nice they power from USB) because they're built to be moved around. I keep backups on one in a fire safe in the garage.
Best option is automated synchronization between PCs on your LAN and an internet host. DropBox does this. I believe SpiderOak will too, linked by another member here.
My strongest advice is to avoid cheap NASes and external hard drives, which is the first place people tend to look.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Except bacula is an enormous beast to configure. My vote is for backuppc
The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
I have used this service and it's great. It's based on zfs. The direct access to backups via smb is great and the home NAS performance/functionality/feature set is what I would expect to find with an enterprise class system.
Our PCs at home all perform incremental backups onto our server (Synology DS207) over the LAN. This takes place every night that a PC is left powered on (happens typically a couple of times per week). The server automatically backs itself up onto an external USB drive every night, and I swap that USB drive roughly every week, with one being stored in a secure place in the heated garage, which is a separate building to the house. I also keep an archive USB drive for each PC there, and these drives are updated with full backups as required.
The Synology supports remote backup to any rsync-compatible box, including encrypted backup over the internet. We don't use this feature, as local+LAN backups are sufficient for us. Most of the Synology site talks about Windows and Mac, but it supports our Linux PCs equally well.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
This solution scales up nicely too. We use it in our research unit where our storage needs are doubling every 18months. Our current usage is around 20TB
He's talking about the stupidity taking files you wouldn't want to see in public and backing them on dropbox or some other cloudy-place (most likely in plain text.) Granted, his wording is a bit out of whack, but c'mon, the context in which the argument is made is clear.
There are gui version based on Duplicity for Windows and Linux
Duplicati http://code.google.com/p/duplicati/
And Deja Dup https://launchpad.net/deja-dup
Duplicati 2.0 will have a GUI that also works on Mac, currently it only works in the terminal.
Suggest you take a look at Synology (http://www.synology.com/us/index.php) we use them in the small company that I work at and find them to be a good solution.
I use a LaCie Cloudbox http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10563 .
It does the backup itself, so you don't need to keep your PC running. Also, it has built-in encryption.
This could be the product that matches your described use-case the most closely.
The Synology family of NAS devices are compact, well built, perform transparently AES encryption, and feature a great web-based GUI. If you get two Synologies, you can set them to sync to each other other the Internet with encryption. It uses the RSYNC protocol so it doesn't dump useless information over your network.
I highly recommend them.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
I'm actually in the business of building and selling white-box NAS boxes that replicate over the wire, but it sounds like you don't need a $10k rack server with 40+ terabytes. However, at the desktop end of the spectrum, I highly recommend Synology DiskStation products. They support offsite backups and will happily converse with Win/Mac/Lin. The GUI is a bit overkill IMO, but it works and it's fairly easy to use, which is more than I can say about my own products :P
Under the hood, almost all of these boxes use rsync, so if you want to mess with different port numbers, you'll have to handle that mapping at your firewall/gateway.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
1) Buy two USB harddrives and two routers with USB from the "supported hardware" section of this list.
2) Find a geek and have them set it up for you
3) Profit?
Total cost: ~$150 - $400 in equipment, say $200 for a couple hours of labor. While this doesn't meet the "out of the box" requirement, affinity for tinkering is kind of a defining aspect of being a nerd. If that doesn't describe you, I think you asked on the wrong site. (Or maybe I'm wrong, I don't see the slogan "News for Nerds" anymore... Perhaps I'm still in denial about a focus shift.) But, it is inexpensive, uses hardware from well known companies, and such a setup isn't really complicated if you have any business setting up your own backup system in the first place. Personally, I wouldn't trust the reliability nor security of an end-user system I didn't setup and periodically verify, but that's me.
You owe it to yourself to look at Synology's NAS servers. Like you, I almost gave looking until I found these. As with most, you get what you pay for. Their DS710+ can accept data across Gigabit LAN at nearly 100MB/sec (yes that's bytes), mirrored drives, in-place hard drive upgrades, and a while host of other features that is too long to list here. Basically I think it is the perfect SOHO NAS. Note: They have other lower/higher powered models, but most users will find 3TB x 2 (mirrored) to be adequate.
What I've learned this year, about on-line backup is that I DO NOT WANT live syncing of my data with the backup. I tried SugarSync and ran away.
* I do not want the increased complexity of figuring out versions of my stuff. (I will version when I want.)
* I do not want it syncing mistakes that I made. In my case, a faulty software RAID driver (thanks AMD and Gigabyte) was corrupting sectors until my stuff was useless. Not the kind of thing I want to reverse engineer from "versioned" live backups.
* I do not want to discuss with my non-tech friends how a service like this is understandable for them, because it is not.
* I do not want it to create "briefcases."
* I do not want it to try to understand the Mac image folder versus the PC image library or any other "virtual" folder. Double bad points for trying to convert between the two OSs.
Please understand that I felt like I did want all this until I tried it. All of the above have gone wrong spectacularly in the first three months of use. For instance, I put my households shared pictures in the Win7 "Public" images library. Sugarsync made copies of these pictures and put them into my private user library. Now what? What happens on a live backup when I delete these copies? Will I confuse the backup software even more?
So what I want in on-line backup, simply, is a virtual metaphor of burning a DVD of my stuff. It should be easier and bigger. If it were easy, I'd do it once a week or month and be happy. I would also force my parents to use it for their business. Not until then.
I have worked with a company that builds devices that do just that: http://dattobackup.com/ It's a powerful NAS, and anything you put on it gets automatically uploaded off site. Works pretty well, I used one for years, and set one up for my mother's law firm.
Tarsnap
XCopy and the task scheduler in Windows is all you need.
/?
xcopy
I don't respond to AC's.
Check Dynamic Vault www.dynamicvault.com They offer encrypted remote backup with multiple key, full turn-key DR services and even offer the option for them not to know the key (youre on your own if you lose it).
What's more you can share the stuff to your friends without even giving them a password (epic fail number one) or if authentication is working that day they don't get locked out if you've given them your password once even if you've changed it a few times since (epic fail number two). They also look at your stuff for deduplication purposes (epic fail number three).
To put things in perspective - they fucked up so badly that even ordinary FTP is far more secure! When their product is inferior in that way to what every single hosting company on the planet can do then you start to wonder why everyone ouside of their marketing section (which somehow managed to make their turd of a product look like fine chocolates) even go to work in the mornings.
They run rsync over SSH, and you can even backup to an encrypted USB/eSata disk. All standard linux, so you can read the result on any linux system. And since they run linux, you can tweak as much as you like :)
I've used unison for a while, but I have to start the synchronization, every time :(
I use dropbox for photo synchronization with my family, because of space limitations, only the last month of photos :D
Finally, I've started testing sparkleshare that allows me to configure a server (my server). I have a plugin for Linux that is getting better. (still waiting for the android one)
Encrypted offsite backups. Unless you want to control the offsite location as well.