Amazon S3 AWS new way to backup

[tmetro-blu-5a1Jt6qxUNc at public.gmane.org (Tom Metro)]

James Kramer wrote:
> There is a new and better way to backup data by using s3fs to mount a
> S3 bucket to local directory and then use rsync to keep up to date
> with the files. The Howto is posted here:
> http://blog.eberly.org/2008/10/27/how-i-automated-my-backups-to-amazon-s3-using-rsync/

Nice tip.

Backing up to S3 isn't necessarily the hard part. Backing up to S3 
securely and efficiently, is. Two things should be addressed in the 
intro to that howto: 1. Does using rsync in this fashion take full 
advantage of rsync? In other words, does s3fs permit rsync to obtain a 
hash of a portion of a file, and update a portion of a file, or do those 
operations require the transfer of an entire file. 2. While S3 may 
encrypt things on their end, some users would prefer a solution where 
encryption happens locally, so the data is safe over the wire, as well 
as when in storage. Where, if anywhere, does s3fs encrypt the data?

Probably digging into the s3fs documentation would uncover the answers 
to these questions.

One of the comment to the article mentioned you needed to use the 
commercial version of s3fs to get encryption:
http://www.subcloud.com/

  -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/