[Discuss] NAS: cloud backups

[tmetro+blu at gmail.com (Tom Metro)]

Rich Braun wrote:
> In the future I'd like to have replication to cloud systems...

My thought was that the 2nd NAS in the pair that has responsibility for
backups would hold historical snapshots, while also syncing the latest
version to one or two cloud storage services.

Using stock firmware that comes with the appliance has the advantage
that it likely has out-of-box support for multiple cloud storage services.

However, I have near zero confidence that any of those built-in clients
will properly support a "trust no one" encryption model. At best, you'll
be syncing already encrypted blobs to the cloud service, which can be
quite inefficient. (If the encryption is done well, a single byte change
to a file (or whatever unit of storage) will result in the whole file
looking different.

We have reached a point where there are a bunch of companies competing
on price to provide raw "object" storage using an API compatible with
Amazon's S3, but I've yet to read of a backup tool with an architecture
to handle encrypted backups that are as network efficient as rsync.


> ...I manage myself...

That gives you more flexibility, if you can't accomplish what you want
with object storage. But otherwise seems like a more costly and time
consuming approach.


> ...and fiber-optic gigabit Internet comes to my house. ... So the
> cluster-software management tools should work the same on local
> hardware as cloud servers.

While I can see the appeal of having a "live" storage node in the cloud
(perhaps one that remains in an encrypted state until you need it...or
maybe the architecture needs to be switched so the encryption is
happening on the client accessing the network storage or on some middle
layer), that way if your LAN hardware dies, it can take over at the cost
of some added latency.

But it seems more practical for now to treat the cloud as a place where
your send batched deltas periodically. Something that isn't too
bandwidth intensive. At least not for a SOHO use case.

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
The Perl Shop, Newton, MA, USA
"Predictable On-demand Perl Consulting."
http://www.theperlshop.com/