trying to do a F/OSS based cloud back up system
July 24, 2010 - 10:58am
Cloud-based backup
Jonathan,
The biggest challenge I see of doing this with open source is the cost of storage. At that point, solutions like Mozy, Backblaze or Carbonite might not be that much more expensive than setting up something yourself. (Not sure how things like Skydrive fit into the mix. I'm not familiar with that option.)
However, you mentioned you have three sites. If you have storage capacity, then it might be more cost-effective to back up from one site to another. You could even back up twice. Site A could back up to sites B and C, site B to A and C, etc.
The easiest way I can think of to do this would be with rsync over ssh. The resulting backup sets would not be compressed (other than what ssh provides) but because rsync only backs up changes to files, your nightly/weekly backups should be relatively quick. If you're backing up Windows systems, there are Windows versions of these programs available.
Micah
hello there,
I do system admin for a Christian charity in Jerusalem Israel.
I am trying to put together a cloud based back up system, which will be needed at 3 different sites.
This set up needs to be encrypted before it leaves our network, compressed and be able to do scheduled back ups at nights/weekends.
I discovered using Cobian, this is open source and its nice and simple and supports compression, 256 bit encryption, I can break files up into 50Mb pieces (Skydrive requires this) and has really nice front end. I can at least use this to grab the folders from various servers to be backed up and prepare them to be pushed out to the cloud.
Where as there are numerous hosting companies that do this for a fee, as Microsoft have a generous 25Gb of free online storage space with Skydrive, I was hoping to use some app that upload it to there...
I have tried out Gladinet, all the features I need to use I have to pay in the full version of $60 per licence. Ok my boss might consider paying that possibly, but the three days of trial of using the pro features makes testing this out awkward, I dont like the app's front end much either.
Besides I like open source apps and I would rather out charity spend money on helping poor Israeli families :)
thanks
Jonathan
IT Systems administrator
Bridges for Peace
Jerusalem ISRAEL