[Discuss] On-site backups revisited - rsnapshot vs. CrashPlan

[matt at mattshields.org (Matt Shields)]

On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 4:40 PM, Rich Braun <richb at pioneer.ci.net> wrote:

> I wrote last month a query about CrashPlan free peer-to-peer software from
> Code42.  I failed to get satisfaction from the vendor, even though the CEO
> of
> Code42 made a response, you can view the thread at
>
> https://crashplan.zendesk.com/entries/64160-How-do-I-request-a-full-integrity-check
> ; he didn't follow up any further though.
>
> I am developing an alternative strategy based on suggestions from BLU.
>  Here's
> what I posted at the CrashPlan forum about that:
>
> I haven't yet found a suitable replacement for CrashPlan (peer-to-peer) off
> the shelf, but here's the strategy I'm using going forward:
>
> * Set up a central backup server using rsnapshot which can easily
>   be set up to make incremental filesystem backups similar to
>   CrashPlan's peer-to-peer mechanism
> * Supplement rsnapshot with a script to make sha256sum checksums of
>   the archive contents, stored in a simple db table
> * Craft a monitoring script to warn me in case the archive files no
>   longer match checksums, and to warn when backups are incomplete
>   or stale
> * Make a tool that makes it more obvious to me whether a given local
>   directory or computer is being backed up
>
> That's all I really wanted CrashPlan's peer-to-peer software to do, but
> it's
> hard to find out what it's actually doing under the covers.  For on-site
> backups, I don't need some of the other features that CrashPlan provides:
> encryption, de-duplication, the convenient UI.  But I do urgently need
> monitoring that goes beyond CrashPlan's weekly status emails, along with
> integrity checks that I control and understand.
>
> I /think/ I'm still happy with the paid remote-site backup service but I
> have
> to supplement or replace my local backups as noted above.
>
> ---
> I'm not sure how aggressive I have to be with the integrity checking --
> I've
> actually never had a known instance of a file getting corrupt -- but I
> figure
> it's worthwhile for a long-term archive.  Have any of you found or
> developed
> tools for this part of it, in particular doing it in conjunction with
> rsnapshot or another similar tool?
>
> Setting up rsnapshot is fairly easy, though at some point I want to write
> up
> and post a better how-to for the benefit of future users.  In particular
> the
> two-step process of "sync" and "rotate" isn't well-documented in the
> places I
> looked online, and you really want to have a separate script (beyond what
> cron
> does by itself) to invoke the rotation methods.
>
> -rich
>
>
>
How about OwnCloud? http://owncloud.org/features/  Setup your own Dropbox
service with no dependencies on anyone else.


Matt