I know a lot of people use #crashplan at home and integrated into their NAS boxes

[G+_Ben Reese]

Scott Baker yeah, I saw that. Disappointing. If you never have to restore, it's not a problem - but then what's the point of backing up?

 

The 30 day limit is annoying too. I don't check every file every month to make sure it didn't accidentally get deleted or corrupted.

 

But, it's the most affordable plan currently, so I may end up using them anyhow. The alternative is buying another NAS to keep at my mother in laws as an off-site backup. That would probably be cheaper in the long run.

[G+_Ben Tyger]

I'm looking into #duplicati with B2. It looks like B2 doesn't have the 30 day expiration. I don't mind paying 5 USD/month for 1 TB of backup storage. To me 25 USD/month for seems a bit much for S3.

 

Duplicati also has TNO encryption so I don't have to worry about backblaze's questionable encryption.

[G+_Ben Tyger]

My biggest unknown is can duplicati support multiple destinations of different types. How does it fare over network file shares (smb/nfs) ?

[G+_Scott Dible]

Ben Tyger I don't believe that Duplicati supports multiple destinations simultaneously. But you can easily create two jobs to get that done. I'm not sure how/if it supports network shares... I'm running it on my OMV NAS, so that's where all my shares live. I do have a backup that I setup to two destinations. I have one unencrypted being copied to another drive locally, and then an encrypted version that gets stored in Google Drive. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be a problem to support local shares, but I haven't tried it.. It supports a lot of different protocols.

 

In the end, it FOSS (LPGL), so why not at least give it a try? You could always try a local free/NAS backup solution first, and then if you are happy with it, roll it out to a paid storage service. That's essentially what I'm working on now.

[G+_Ben Tyger]

Scott Dible I wasn't really worried about the share but it'd make it easier. I could just setup a local Apache webdav server as a destination. Same with the multiple jobs. Didn't know if it was a single destination per a instance.

 

My biggest concern is setup time. I have 5 kids and not lot a whole lot of time to give to this important project.

 

With crashplan I had low cost 3-2-1 backups in a relatively ease of setup and maintenance. That's why it was a perfect fit. Trying to hash out a new backup 3-2-1 scheme with a similar cost factor for 7 machines with a 1 TB of data isn't easy. That's a pretty daunting task for 2 months when you still have to account for upload time too..

 

So I'm relying a lot on this community and other forums to figure out most of the little things so when I do get time to work on it, I can have a productive session.

[G+_Scott Dible]

Ben Tyger Understood. It's a big task... I'm migrating from USB backup that I then take offsite... I have copies stored in family safes across the country... LOL.

 

My situation isn't as complicated as yours, but I simplified it by setting up the server.... If it's not on the server, it must not be important. We treat the data on computers/phones as disposable... We store critical documents in user shares, and we backup photos (our real prized possessions) using multiple techniques through other services in addition to the server backups.

 

Seems to me that Duplicati comes close to 3-2-1 with the option of storing the backups wherever you want. If something cheaper comes along, you can just switch storage providers. Just for fun... I just now installed the windows "client" and it works great. Puts an icon in the system tray to quickly launch and monitor the web app. I was able to create a backup to a SMB/CIFS share on my server by using the path (\\ServerName\share) and authentication. Took me < 5 minutes to do the whole thing.

 

As a matter of a fact... Now that I think about it... once you get it installed on your 7 systems, this may be easier to manage... Since it's a web client, you would be able to access the setup on any computer by simply going to IP.address:8200.

 

I'm going to keep following this topic, because I'm really interested in making my own backups better. I think I'm pretty much set on Duplicati, but haven't settled on where I will store my offsite data yet. It will be nice to not have to remember to do rotating backups and carry them offsite when we visit family. :)

[G+_Ben Reese]

Wow, so Duplicati it supports webdav and SMB/CIFS, it would be real simple to even setup an external drive connected to a Raspberry Pi at the Mother in Law's to facilitate the off-site... That makes it real tempting! Even better if the backups could be seeded locally then moved off site for incremental backups. Definitely something I'll have to look into.

 

I only have 2 backups to manage (mine and my parents) and 3 kids to distract me, so not quite as bad ?

[G+_Scott Dible]

Ben Reese You not even need to do that... the backups are already incremental, so you don't gain much by doing it locally and then moving off-site. If you do, there are probably better tools for that...

[G+_Ben Reese]

Scott Dible my thought is I have Gigabit Ethernet at home (100 Mbps if the Raspberry Pi route). My Internet upload is 20 Mbps. Seed while local then let the incremental happen over the Internet.

[G+_Scott Dible]

Ben Reese Ah, I get it now. That should be possible. Just create a local backup, move the drive/files to a remote server, and then edit the original backup to have a new destination. Smart. I like it!