Hello everyone,

 

I've been a loving unRaid user for about three years now - and with two hard drive failures to date, plus a few drive upgrades along the way - it has not failed me at all.  (A drive failure actually is a good thing for me, so far, as it gets me thinking about how to improve my setup.)

 

I simply am a raving fan!

 

There are two things that I'm looking to improve in my configuration:  AntiVirus and Offsite Backup

 

I may fear physical risk more than most - my house burned down to the ground on Christmas Day one year when I was a child - but everyone should acknowledge that UnRaid itself is NOT a backup solution.

 

Offsite backup seems challenging, as these appear to be the best options:

 

A.  Use a cloud based backup solution like those provided by a whole host of vendors:  amazonS3, Carbonite, Mozy, MiMedia, Crashplan, Dropbox, ElephantDrive, BackBlaze, SugarSync, JungleDrive, iDrive, SpiderOak, and Wuala, among others. 

 

Firstly, many of these services have backup limits, don't support network shares for backup, don't support large files either (I have Photoshop files in the several GB category) and have varying pricing - I'm sure someone else has done some research - but I'm not sure this is the right idea.

 

The time required to sync the initial backup is considerable (some will allow you to mail them a USB to seed your backup, but I haven't seen any that offer anywhere above 1GB or so for this service).

 

Even with a pretty solid Cable Internet feed, my upload speed just tested at 3.43 Mbps - so to backup my 9TB of critical data (out of 20TB total on my unRaid), I'm looking at *BEST CASE* about 40 minutes per GB, so 9TB would take about 256 DAYS - and that doesn't include any issues on the receiving end, or the stability of the connection.  Seems highly impractical, and in many cases pretty expensive.

 

Even if I paid $200/month for 50Mbps down/10Mbps up Internet, I'm still looking at a very long time to get this all up - 3 months minimum (and it's a one year contract!).  The best solution of this type would be a company that I could drive my UnRaid to and perform the initial seed backup, or do the mail, load, mail, load, process a few times.  [Are you listening CrashPlan?  :-)  And if you are, it seems a steep price for that seed service.]

 

[side note:  Any of you big Insurance Company Executives - I'd flip my homeowners insurance to a company that would backup my precious family photos/videos/scans/memories in a heartbeat - and it shouldn't cost you much on a grand scale, per customer.  :-)      ]

 

B.  Backup to BluRay.  At 25GB per disc (the most cost efficient solution), this seems like it would take a lot of time - maybe 350 discs to burn, at probably 30-40 minutes a piece.  Yuck!  I guess the best advantage is that _IF_ I remember to store these discs offsite, they're pretty darn secure - and being read-only, they're also virus immune.  Of course, I'd have to update the "catalog" of discs when we take more pictures (and I'm not even going to mention the transfer to a newer media, as that becomes standard - since pretty much every solution requires some of that).

 

C.  Backup to a new (offsite) UnRaid machine.  The good people at CrashPlan have done a great service to the backup community by allowing their software to be used not only with their service, but as a backup solution on its own - and without charge (as far as I can tell).  They describe the process on their website:  http://support.crashplan.com/doku.php/getting_started/back_up_to_a_friend

 

[CrashPlan, if you're listening, I'd like a "Donation" button to thank you for allowing your software to be used this way.]

 

So, I could setup an UnRaid machine as a backup to my existing UnRaid and do an initial backup at my home - then take that backup system and set it up at my office, mom's house, or whatever, and the systems should sync after that, to stay current.  It sounds beautiful - provided you have a Windows computer on each end to handle the CrashPlan software (there appears to be versions for Mac, Solaris, as well as Linux - looks like there's been some success installing it onto UnRaid directly, but it's beyond my Linux know how: http://www.lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=CrashPlan)

 

I only see two caveats, and I'm not sure how to minimize them:  First, is cost, which I can probably handle.  Secondly, if my home UnRaid system somehow has a virus issue - it will propagate that issue to the offsite UnRaid system as well.  Any way to stop this?

 

Any better ideas?  Another UnRaid will cost me a couple grand, I think, so I'd certainly be open to other ideas.  What are you guys/girls doing?

 

Thanks,

 

Russell Schutte

2nd unRAID server here.

 

Parts plus 10x2TB drives can be under $1000 if you forego drive cages.

 

Edit: Expanding briefly, crashplan is really quite easy to get running on unRAID. Someone new might take a couple hours to get through the writeups, but there are plenty of people here who can help.

 

I've switched from a purely rsync-based backup strategy to using crashplan for backup of pc's to unRAID, then rsync to update between unRAID boxes. rsync is part of unRAID and reasonably easy to use.

Hi Cyrnel,

 

Thanks for the reply...  I've been monkeying around with CrashPlan - and while it's pretty cool and might help some users, my files are family photos, family videos, etc - very few "secure files" (tax returns), and since my offsite backup will be a family member's home, I think I'd prefer my files to NOT be encrypted on that end.  As some have pointed out on other boards - if CrashPlan goes bellyup, it seems that file recovery may be impossible (they claim you can do local backup/restore without communicating with their servers, yet a fresh install of the software does nothing until you login to their servers).

 

I've been hearing about rsync - can it be configured to sync locally for that first load, then be configured to maintain the sync after the backup machine is moved offsite?  Any suggestions on another way to do it if rsync won't?  (I've also been looking at GoodSync, and it looks like it could maybe work, but I think you also then need to run an FTP server on at least one end, both if you want bi-directional sync).

 

Thanks,

 

Russell Schutte

Sounds like GoodSync isn't so great for this:  http://www.geekzone.co.nz/ZollyMonsta/6046

 

I really love the idea of RSync over SSH.  (Reading lots).

 

Thanks for any pointers,

 

Russell