Server backup softwares and backup hosts

Lounge EndeavourOS pub
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Hello, I wanted to start a thread about server backup solutions and your experiences with them. I’m managing quite a few centos 7 servers, and data loss is always on my mind, just didn’t have time or possibility to try out more solutions. It would be a big problem for me, if I somehow lost data, literally the worst thing I can imagine :sweat_smile:. Curious if borg is a good choice.

Tried some commercial solutions(synology’s active backup, r1soft, synconix), they were all horrible and with serious bugs, not to mention expensive.

I’ve been using borg with borgbase.com as host. It’s fast and didn’t have issues with retrieving files from backup, the few times I’ve needed them. The host is really cheap, 12€ a year.

Also I know about Hetzner’s storage box, it’s compatible with a lot protocols, that’s next on my list to try as host.

My favorite things about borg and necessary criterias for other software:

  • no need to open ports and run some service on the client machine for it
  • encryption
  • differential (maybe incremental, not sure if it’s a good idea with more than years worth of daily backups)
  • compression
  • cheap hosting available
  • saving unix permissions
  • corruption resistant (afaik borg is, if you verify periodically)

Did you have problems with borg?

Do you guys have experience with other software, that more or less fit the above list? I looked at a few, but I can’t decide without trying them out for a few weeks each. Contenders right now are restic, duplicity, duplicati, rsnapshot with cryptshot(rsnapshot inside luks)

Extra:
Do you think about disaster recovery? How would you go about it in case of physical servers and virtual too. I know about rear, just not sure how to save recovery images efficiently or make image from existing borg backup. Also I’m not sure if I could convince my vps host to run a recovery image for me. So I would like something that might be able to restore server to a previous state if I have at least ssh or command line access(novnc).

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I am currently using borg to a local server and then rclone to store a remote replica. I like this solution because you can target any S3 storage provider many of which are very inexpensive. This way you have both a local borg backup and an offsite borg backup.

I have also used restic in commercial applications. It is also very good. I like it better if you want to directly target a remote backup.

I used duplicati for some time but I would not recommend it. It isn’t as reliable as borg and restic in my experience.

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Thanks for the reply, I forgot I use rclone with storj to store a local borg backup for a personal vps.
Most of the time at my clients they don’t have an extra server for backup or space on an existing server for backups, that’s why I was asking about cheap cloud storage that’s compatible with some backup software. But yeah it can’t get cheaper than hetzner’s offer I think. Gonna try restic out.

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I’m managing quite a few centos 7 servers

Me too, about 150 debian installations

if I somehow lost data, literally the worst thing I can imagine

Everyone here gets your pain and worries :wink:

I’ve been using borg with borgbase.com

gah, keep your data to yourself :stuck_out_tongue: borg is super easy to setup.

Also I know about Hetzner’s storage box

Hetzners storage box is rather slow. i dont know if its the right solution for several servers but with 7 you should be fine.

  • no need to open ports and run some service on the client machine for it

if you dont firewall outgoing packages :stuck_out_tongue:

Did you have problems with borg?

well its not super simple to understand but its EXTREMELY reliable in my experience. I used it for about 3 years now (borg1) and just switched to the new borg version 2.

Do you guys have experience with other software

all of them, NOTHING beats borg. speed, easy to use and restore backups, strong encryption. I will never switch again :wink:

Do you think about disaster recovery?

ansible for EVERYTHING + borg for “dynamic data” (databases and what not)

If you want to give the new borg2 a shot I just installed it following this very easy to understand blogpost. I just copy pasted all the commands there and it worked out of the box.

borg2 is still in beta so you might want to wait a bit before you use it in production.

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What do you mean by this? You maintain a server for backup?

I never really looked into ansible. Every server has some different configuration, sometimes something doesn’t work and I have to change things, add users and groups, add services etc. I want something that restores the latest system configuration as fast as possible. I have googled ansible disaster recovery just now, didn’t find any usable examples just a bunch of pictures with jargon I barely understand. But it’s time to look into this I guess.

The main problem for me is financial, I could build some stuff, but the budget is really thin for backup infrastructure. If I tell the clients to pay 10 euro for backup, they just come with the dumb questions, that everything is working fine why do they need to pay more… That’s why I like Hetzner’s offer, it’s cheap, didn’t try it yet, but if it works, doesn’t matter if it is slow. If I can download with a few megabytes/s it’s good enough.

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What do you mean by this? You maintain a server for backup?

yes, like a cloud or dedicated server, commonly with hetzner.

I want something that restores the latest system configuration as fast as possible.

then maybe rear: https://relax-and-recover.org/ but not if this is the latest and greatest approach. due to ansible + borg i never gave this “restore” approach much more thought since many years.

I have googled ansible disaster recovery just now

ansible lets you define your entire infrastructure as code. you basically dont ssh to the server anymore but write yaml files that define all the users, groups, apt packages and config files you want to install.
getting started with that is a bit of effort (more than a bit) but its very much worth it if you maintain a lot of servers.

But it’s time to look into this I guess.

may I kindly recommend blunix, they manage this for the company I work for using ansible. All of their software (like the ansible-roles) is FOSS.

If I tell the clients to pay 10 euro for backup

well if you have more than 20 clients, running your own borg backup for this would be an option with Hetzner. Depends on how much data to backup. You could use the hetzner storage box for SUPER cheap storage space. Its not blazingly fast, but if you can handle a bit of downtime till the restore is done it might be an option.

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