Please consider hurricane electric (he.net) - they have been a great contributor to the community (with their irc.lightning.net servers and their free ipv6 tunnels, etc.) and their bandwidth is $1/megabit.
$600/mo for a full cabinet and 100 megabits/s of bandwidth. And it's not some lame fly by night... I highly recommend them.
Amazon, for instance, has AWS locations around the world, although that probably doesn't help you much given their track record.
But rsync.net (I am the founder) has storage locations in Zurich and Hong Kong, in addition to the US. These sites are protected, just like the US sites, by the Warrant Canary:
So while I agree that everyone in the world should be wary of USA PATRIOT, it's not a given that non-US consumers have to avoid US providers across the board.
If you have an io.com shell account, we would like to gift you a lifetime free rsync.net account for the purposes of backing up, and parking, the contents of that shell account.
I have never had an io.com shell, but between rsync and tar+gpg+ftp you should be able to quickly and easily dump the contents of your shell to an rsync.net account.
Just email info@rsync.net and we'll set this up for you. FWIW, this is a continuation of our efforts to support the work being done by Jason Scott, the "Archive Team" and the safeguarding of digital history, generally.
The Egyptian authorities have the ability to shut down free speech in 2011, but turning off the Internet is not enough - they must completely halt modern commerce.
Since they are not, as far as I can imagine, performing mass jamming of the 2.4ghz spectrum, anyone with a laptop and "wi-fi" connectivity has everything they need to conduct insurrection. This concept is known as "Free Speech or Stone Age":
I couldn't care less what the cloud, or SAS, or software is running _on_. What I care about is whether or not it provides open, standards-based interoperability.
Does Amazon s3 run on linux or bsd or WIndows ? I don't know, but I do know that I can't just connect over plain old SFTP or WebDAV without major gimmickry and transformation. (FWIW, providers like rsync.net do, in fact, allow direct, standards based interaction, so it's not impossible).
On the other hand, another cloud-like provider might run on a completely closed source, proprietary foundation, but if it provides plain old standards based interaction from the outside, who cares ?
I began writing this short piece a year or two ago, titled "Free Speech or Stone Age":
http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/06/free-speech-or-stone-age.html
The current events in Iran are a perfect illustration of two competing memes: the (mistaken) notion that a state can completely suppress anonymous free speech while maintaining a modern economy, and the (surprising to some) notion that that is impossible.
Many Iranians (and even many Americans) may not realize it, but arbitrary, anonymous free speech on any subject is currently available in Iran, as well as China, etc. This is a fact. Only by freezing all international travel, confiscating all general purpose computing devices, and outlawing/jamming all standardized wireless network protocols could Iran possibly hope to curtail this speech.
Both of these items are long overdue to be fixed - having a modern version of vmware working on FreeBSD is essential to many, many developers and engineers, and because so much of the web now requires a recent version of flash to _use at all_ it is imperative that there be a method to use flash9 on a native FreeBSD browser.
I encourage everyone that is interested in FreeBSD on the desktop to look into supporting these bounties.
rsync.net would be happy to offer bandwidth and support to the authors - please contact info@rsync.net if these resources are still needed for your project.
Much of what we do is based on SCP, so we were happy to see this announcement.
Big files that I don't mind losing (ripped dvds and cds) are on a local, cheap raid-5 array.
Everything else resides on my PC.
Every night, my PC runs an automatic rsync job that syncs it all up to my rsync.net filesystem.
I guess, theoretically, I could take it a step further, and add a layer of geographic (and even political) redundancy by making my account sync to California and Colorado, and not just the primary CA site.
rsync.net just announced sites in Switzerland and India... hmmm...another tier:)
I suspect that they are alone in doing this, at least among offsite backup companies. rsync.net has adopted an extremely progressive privacy policy, and augmented it with a "warrant canary" which serves to alert the customer base when a search warrant or subpoena has been served that is "secret", as per provisions in the USA PATRIOT act.
This may not be that useful in a business or technical sense, but it's nice to see someone taking a stand on these issues, and thinking through their role as a service provider in relation to the rights of their customers. Just read their philosophy statements and you'll understand what I mean.
I have chosen rsync.net because they are clueful both socially and technically. I defy anyone to find me another provider that will allow me to run a duplicity encrypted backup to multiple geographically redundant sites across the country.
I am not surprised that the article did not have rsync.net in the comparison, since their candidates were pretty consumer-grade.
But rsync.net is going to become known as _the_ choice for unix/sysadmin folks (and the generally clueful).
They are the only ones that offer advanced backup and encryption services such as duplicity and rdiff-backup support, in addition to their basic protocols such as rsync, Unison, WebDAV.
Also, and this is huge, they are the ONLY offsite backup provider with geographical redundancy. I have my data backed up automatically to both San Diego and Denver, and this is being expanded this summer to Switzerland, India, and Japan.
rsync.net is going to be the "kleenex" of offsite storage, at least for sysadmin/Unix people.
Slashdot Mirror
We've had a very significant discount for HN readers for years and we'd be happy to extend that to /. readers. Just email and ask.
Really happy to be here - I am not sure why I am labeled as "new submitter" since I have been a slashdot user for ... 15 years ?
Happy to answer any questions about our service here as well.
Please consider hurricane electric (he.net) - they have been a great contributor to the community (with their irc.lightning.net servers and their free ipv6 tunnels, etc.) and their bandwidth is $1/megabit.
$600/mo for a full cabinet and 100 megabits/s of bandwidth. And it's not some lame fly by night ... I highly recommend them.
Not all providers are based in a single nation.
Amazon, for instance, has AWS locations around the world, although that probably doesn't help you much given their track record.
But rsync.net (I am the founder) has storage locations in Zurich and Hong Kong, in addition to the US. These sites are protected, just like the US sites, by the Warrant Canary:
http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt
So while I agree that everyone in the world should be wary of USA PATRIOT, it's not a given that non-US consumers have to avoid US providers across the board.
If you have an io.com shell account, we would like to gift you a lifetime free rsync.net account for the purposes of backing up, and parking, the contents of that shell account.
I have never had an io.com shell, but between rsync and tar+gpg+ftp you should be able to quickly and easily dump the contents of your shell to an rsync.net account.
Just email info@rsync.net and we'll set this up for you. FWIW, this is a continuation of our efforts to support the work being done by Jason Scott, the "Archive Team" and the safeguarding of digital history, generally.
The Egyptian authorities have the ability to shut down free speech in 2011, but turning off the Internet is not enough - they must completely halt modern commerce.
Since they are not, as far as I can imagine, performing mass jamming of the 2.4ghz spectrum, anyone with a laptop and "wi-fi" connectivity has everything they need to conduct insurrection. This concept is known as "Free Speech or Stone Age":
http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/06/free-speech-or-stone-age.html
Unless you remove the general purpose tools of modern commerce, filtering (or even disabling) the Internet will not stop speech.
I couldn't care less what the cloud, or SAS, or software is running _on_. What I care about is whether or not it provides open, standards-based interoperability.
Does Amazon s3 run on linux or bsd or WIndows ? I don't know, but I do know that I can't just connect over plain old SFTP or WebDAV without major gimmickry and transformation. (FWIW, providers like rsync.net do, in fact, allow direct, standards based interaction, so it's not impossible).
On the other hand, another cloud-like provider might run on a completely closed source, proprietary foundation, but if it provides plain old standards based interaction from the outside, who cares ?
I began writing this short piece a year or two ago, titled "Free Speech or Stone Age": http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2009/06/free-speech-or-stone-age.html The current events in Iran are a perfect illustration of two competing memes: the (mistaken) notion that a state can completely suppress anonymous free speech while maintaining a modern economy, and the (surprising to some) notion that that is impossible. Many Iranians (and even many Americans) may not realize it, but arbitrary, anonymous free speech on any subject is currently available in Iran, as well as China, etc. This is a fact. Only by freezing all international travel, confiscating all general purpose computing devices, and outlawing/jamming all standardized wireless network protocols could Iran possibly hope to curtail this speech.
http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/2007cb.html
(vmware 6.x working on a modern FreeBSD release)
and:
http://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2007/12/bounty-posted-f.html
Both of these items are long overdue to be fixed - having a modern version of vmware working on FreeBSD is essential to many, many developers and engineers, and because so much of the web now requires a recent version of flash to _use at all_ it is imperative that there be a method to use flash9 on a native FreeBSD browser.
I encourage everyone that is interested in FreeBSD on the desktop to look into supporting these bounties.
rsync.net would be happy to offer bandwidth and support to the authors - please contact info@rsync.net if these resources are still needed for your project. Much of what we do is based on SCP, so we were happy to see this announcement.
I already do this at my home.
... hmmm...another tier :)
Big files that I don't mind losing (ripped dvds and cds) are on a local, cheap raid-5 array.
Everything else resides on my PC.
Every night, my PC runs an automatic rsync job that syncs it all up to my rsync.net filesystem.
I guess, theoretically, I could take it a step further, and add a layer of geographic (and even political) redundancy by making my account sync to California and Colorado, and not just the primary CA site.
rsync.net just announced sites in Switzerland and India
.... raidarray.net, which seems to be broken / not allowing new signups, or god knows what.
Whereas you are talking about / recommending rsync.net. Which I second (third ?)
I suspect that they are alone in doing this, at least among offsite backup companies. rsync.net has adopted an extremely progressive privacy policy, and augmented it with a "warrant canary" which serves to alert the customer base when a search warrant or subpoena has been served that is "secret", as per provisions in the USA PATRIOT act.
This may not be that useful in a business or technical sense, but it's nice to see someone taking a stand on these issues, and thinking through their role as a service provider in relation to the rights of their customers. Just read their philosophy statements and you'll understand what I mean.
I have chosen rsync.net because they are clueful both socially and technically. I defy anyone to find me another provider that will allow me to run a duplicity encrypted backup to multiple geographically redundant sites across the country.
I am not surprised that the article did not have rsync.net in the comparison, since their candidates were pretty consumer-grade.
But rsync.net is going to become known as _the_ choice for unix/sysadmin folks (and the generally clueful).
They are the only ones that offer advanced backup and encryption services such as duplicity and rdiff-backup support, in addition to their basic protocols such as rsync, Unison, WebDAV.
Also, and this is huge, they are the ONLY offsite backup provider with geographical redundancy. I have my data backed up automatically to both San Diego and Denver, and this is being expanded this summer to Switzerland, India, and Japan.
rsync.net is going to be the "kleenex" of offsite storage, at least for sysadmin/Unix people.