Off site backup for home.

Appleby

Appleby

Appleby

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23 Jul 2011
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156
Hey guys, I'm thinking of a new project and could do with a little advice.

I already have a Windows Home Server box taking backups and doing media storage in my house, however for a new project I was thinking about creating an off-site backup solution in case anything happened. I want to be able to put another server at my parents house and have an incremental backup occurring between the two servers. Hardware wise I was thinking a microserver but I need some help with the software side of things?

How would you do it? Linux, Windows? Would I need to set up a VPN between the two houses? This is all a project that is just an idea at the moment and I wanted to know how feasible it really is.

Thanks!
 
I've always thought about doing this. Now my parent's house can get fibre, it gets even more interesting.

I started off looking at rsync on linux when I last looked at this, no idea if Windows has any suitable methods, but I suppose a nicely scripted Robocopy could suit your needs? Plus you'd get to geek out and tailor your Robocopy exactly as you'd want it.

I'm sure people may recommend you a web based backup but I personally like the idea of having my data offline as well as on some company's servers, added to that you get to do a nice project :-)

BTW you wouldn't necessarily need something as beefy as a microserver to store the data on the other side, a Raspberry Pi or a cheap NAS could do it if you're willing to use Linux rather than Windows.
 
That's kind of my reasoning. I would like to be able to do a backup of my parents machines as well over to my servers so with both end up with an onsite and off site backup solution.

I was thinking of using the microserver as they have the cashback deals running at the moment and I have all the extra hardware needed like 4x 1TB drives knocking around doing nothing. As this would be going at my parents neatness, space and reliability would always be a factor.
 
yea in that case if you already have the drives I would consider a microserver to be a great option. Especially for around £90 (unbelievable value)

With 4 drives you could perhaps use an OS such as FreeNAS, NAS4Free etc to use rsync to backup over the internet lines. You could get away without a VPN, but creating one of those adds to the fun, right!

A VPN could be made using software ( I've never done this ) or some routers can do it.
 
This is exactly what CrashPlan was designed for. It is free to use peer-to-peer (they only charge for their cloud backup). Cross-platform, runs as a service. Have been using it for almost three years and it has been rock solid.

Pre-seed the backup and then take the backup device to your parents' place.

http://www.crashplan.com/consumer/crashplan.html
 
Oh, no need to setup a VPN, the backups are encrypted before they leave each house, so the only thing that flies between houses are the encrypted backups.
 
Sorry, keep thinking of things to add. You can manage the remote side via the CrashPlan website. You login to your account and all your PCs are there, and each can be configured down to the last detail and it will push the changes down to the client.
 
Based on the PRISM (NSA spying) going on in the USA and perhaps here, I would think twice before putting anything in the cloud!
 
I used to run offsite backups to my parents. I had all my data locally on a Linux file server and then this used some scripts to backup to Linux servers at my parents using rsync over SSH. In initial data population was done locally due to the time needed to transfer a large amount of data but the rate of change was low so nightly backups were fine.

Unfortunately they moved so whilst we both have better network connections now they don't currently have anywhere suitable to put a box that could be up all the time at their place :( Now it's small things to the cloud, and big things to USB drives which are kept at theirs.
 
I do this using Freenas and Rsync over SSH (no vpn required)

That said crashplan probably easier to setup.
 
ASE001 said:
Based on the PRISM (NSA spying) going on in the USA and perhaps here, I would think twice before putting anything in the cloud!
Click to expand...
I know people keep saying this sort of thing, but really... is that our biggest fear in life? There's nothing illegal in my files, and if "they" wanted to target me, then my having my backups in the cloud would be far from my biggest problem. If they want it, they can probably get it straight off my PC. They wrote a virus that wrecked Iran's Uranium centrifuges, why couldn't they get onto my little old PC? Plus, online backups are generally encrypted at source, so access to the files would require the encryption key.

Nothing in this world is 100%; you make your choices, and you live with them. Personally, I'm quite happy with my backups in the cloud.
 
I'd just purchase an online backup solution. If you are only backing up a little, you can get free accounts. I pay £60/year for unlimited (I must have close to a terabyte online now).

If you do do your own (although it looks like you will go with Crashplan) you should use rsync as it is designed to sync large amounts of data over slow links efficiently. rsync runs on all OS's as far as I can see (I use rsync under cygwin to backup all my Windows machines to a central server).

I would agree with rotors view on cloud storage too....
 
crashplan can do what you are asking.

i use the actual crashplan server as my offsite though, works great and has saved me already (only been using for around 4 months)
 
I have a few friends that use ownCloud to sync stuff between their home PCs at different locations. Might be worth a look if you only want something small-scale.
 
I'm not sure what to do for my situation.

At home I have a FreeNAS server, desktop PC and laptop. ATM i currently use Skydrive to sync my import docs which are a few GB.

I am looking to backup my desktop OS, server VMs, photos and videos (this is probably a few 100GB). i dont think I can install crashplan as it doesnt work with mounted drives. Maybe ownCloud, goodsync or expandrive might be better?
 
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My VPS uses RAM and CPU but very little of my HDD quota. I'm considering using it as backup of my most important files using OwnCloud.

I was considering doing the same with a HDD at my family home for another off-site with larger capacity but lower bandwidth, but I'm not sure if it would be worthwhile with several TB of data. Presumably with most of it being pre-seeded on my own network, however, the sync would only have to add new items which would be much less drastic.
 
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