What to do when you need remote backups for Linux/Unix/Windows/Mac?

  • October 31, 2007
  • 2 minute read
I was looking for a solution to backup three of my linux machines that I have running this site and many others. After searching for some time, I didn’t actually need to go with a company. I found a friend that provided me some space. During this time I did find out some useful information.

I was looking for a solution to backup three of my linux machines that I have running this site and many others. After searching for some time, I didn’t actually need to go with a company. I found a friend that provided me some space. During this time I did find out some useful information.

During my search for an outside provider I did run into a little article about Amazon S3 and a nifty little tool called Duplicity, which is a backup program built on rsync and GnuPG. The means of storage was Amazon’s S3 service, which is a distributed, redundant, web accessible storage service.

Duplicity + Amazon S3 = incremental encrypted remote backup

Duplicity is a backup program that only backs up the files (and parts of files) that have been modified since the last backup. Built on FLOSS (rsync, GnuPG, tar, and rdiff), it allows efficient, locally encrypted, remote backups.

Amazon S3 is a web service that provides cheap, distributed, redundant, web-accessible storage. S3 currently charges only $0.15 per GB-month storage and $0.10 per GB upload. The API is based on HTTP requests such as GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE.

The following is a description of how I made use of these to back up my laptop, which runs Ubuntu Feisty Fawn.

Read the full article at brainonfire.net
Visit the Duplicity website
Sign up for Amazon S3
AWS Simple Monthly Calculator

I also found a means to backup my workstation, both Mac and Windows using a company called Mozy, which provides full backups for a fee.

Mozy currently provides:
* Open/locked file support: Mozy will back up your documents whether they’re open or closed.
* 128-bit SSL encryption: The same technology used by banks secures your data during the backup process.
* 448-bit Blowfish encryption: Secures your files while in storage, providing peace of mind that your private data is safe from hackers.
* Automatic: Schedule the times to back up and MozyHome does the rest.
* New and changed file detection: MozyHome finds and saves the smallest changes.
* Backs up Outlook files: Disaster-proof email protection.
* Block-level incremental backup: After the initial backup, MozyHome only backs up files that have been added or changed, making subsequent backups lightning fast.

Visit mozy.com

I eventually found a friend located on the same network segment that offered to provide space on his server. Although this isn’t 100%, at least for now its something. Hes currently running Windows 2003 Server, which is fine as I could just use cygwin and SSHD for rsync backups. Which is what I have setup now, and eventually if required I will look into something a little more redudant.


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