im looking into getting crashplan and had a few questions that hopefully a few experienced users could answer as i try and delve into it. since this is more unraid specific i am asking here instead of on the crashplan website.

 

first, my ISP has the stupid idea that people in this day and age want caps on their internet, so i can only transfer 50GB a month (excluding non-peak hours). ridiculous, i know. im in the process of finding out if that is just download or download and upload. if it is upload as well, i will have to configure crashplan to only backup during non-peak hours. is this possible with the crashplan setup in unraid? i know i could just write some sort of batch script for that but is there anything built in to manage this?

 

second, the fastest upload i can get is a paltry 2Mb which will take well over a year for the initial upload, running 24/7 and over 3.5 years if i am only able to run during non-peak hours at maximum. there is a possibility of using another connection for the initial upload which will be much faster. i've talked to crashplan support about putting it on a usb drive and, for example, taking it to a friend out of state with much faster internet. they said thats fine and explained the "adoption" process. i was wondering though if anyone here has experience doing that and what are things to keep in mind or look out for when doing that?

First, you can specify the hours that crashplan runs. There is a feature request to throttle bandwidth by hours but I wouldn't hold out for it. All ISPs that I know, count both upload and download so you are probably out of luck there.

 

The adoption process will work there but here are some things you should think about. The best way to do that would just leave your Unraid server at your friends house but then your are without your server for a while. This will not need an adoption and also keeps your file organization. If you just send him drives then you will need to have him use your crashplan login on his computer and just backup the drive you want. When you are done you will then start/login to crashplan on your server and adopt the backup from his computer.

 

Also, realize Crashplan doesn't always max out your connection and has been having upload speed issues. Currently I am uploading at 3mbps and for a little bit was maxing out at 4mbps. I hear some people get up to 6-8mbps. At the beginning of the year speeds were down to 500kbps.

Regarding adoption make sure that the computers are running the same OS. i.e don't do your backup under linux (unraid) and give it to your friend who copies it into a windows crashplan installation.

 

A friend did that expecting it to work - it didn't, confirmed by crashplan support. You'll end up having to backup the whole lot again or re seeding your end from windows.

 

The latest crashplan release from a couple of weeks ago has vague suggestions in the release notes that this *may* be better now but keep it in mind.

glad to know that i can specify when it runs. i really wish i could leave it over there but i will have to piecemeal it out on external drives. i cant be without my server for months at a time. the different OS may pose a problem. that's really going to make things more difficult but a good thing to know ahead of time. thank you both. what kind of upload speeds can i expect? i decided to make a test account with test data first to learn the ins and outs before trusting it with my real data. i am running an upload test at work that can upload at 50Mbps but am getting speeds around 3.5 or 4. is this typical?

Latest release notes here : http://support.crashplan.com/doku.php/release/3_5_2 suggest :

 

Improvements to Adopt a Computer when performing a cross-platform adoption

 

Quite vague. It may be worth getting in touch with crashplan support if it's something that might be important.

 

When my friend did it we both expected it to be fine - after all surely crashplan behaves the same internally on any OS? Java and all that.

 

So perhaps that *should* be the case and there was just a bug that's been quashed.

thats a good idea. i will be contacting support about it. i have another question now though. can i merge backup sets? say in my unraid server a have a folder called 'my_files'. the folder is 1tb in size. i put half of it on a 500gb external drive, i take it to my friends house and upload it to crashplan's cloud. after thats done, i format the drive and bring over the other half. when all is done i adopt the computer from my unraid machine. how will i get it to realize that those two backup sets are all part of the 'my_files' folder on my server?

thats a good idea. i will be contacting support about it. i have another question now though. can i merge backup sets? say in my unraid server a have a folder called 'my_files'. the folder is 1tb in size. i put half of it on a 500gb external drive, i take it to my friends house and upload it to crashplan's cloud. after thats done, i format the drive and bring over the other half. when all is done i adopt the computer from my unraid machine. how will i get it to realize that those two backup sets are all part of the 'my_files' folder on my server?

 

I'm not sure you can. I could be wrong.

 

I don't know what happens if you have multiple backups sets pointing at the same target. Notionally crashplan creates a single metadata / backup structure on the target based on the id of the source machine. If you do two backup sets to the same place then you should have the same id and they should end up in the same structure. But who knows.

 

If you have enough space you could test it. Backing up to folder in your client behaves the same way as it does when you backup to a remote source.

p.s as a general word of caution Crashplan can be very picky about what it does with data and what happens when you do an adoption based on existing data (they have a whole page of docs on that, which makes only vague sense!) as well as other random other edge case scenarios.

 

It's not difficult to forget something, get one tiny thing wrong or just come across unintended side effects that will see you backing the whole lot up again. Ask me how I know

 

If you can keep it as straight forward as possible - you'll have a better chance of this working. And it can work. Ask me how I know that too

 

I would suggest you get hold of a bigger external drive and not worry about it.

 

If shuttling back and forth a few times until you get it right isn't a big problem though then you can be a little less careful!

 

I've also realised I'm not entirely sure if you're talking about taking data to a friend so they can host your backup. Or taking it to them so they can upload it to crashplan on your behalf.

 

If the latter just throw your questions at support and see what they say. THey also offer a seed drive service (they send you a drive and you backup to it and send it to crashplan who ingest it onto their servers for you) if you're in the US. It doest cost money though which you may be looking to avoid. http://support.crashplan.com/doku.php/feature/seed_service

 

However their drive size is limited (1TB?) but that might be enough.

well, that was just a simplified example. i do have larger drives. the issue is no matter what size drive i have i will have to make multiple trips because the total backup will be 10-15TB. i am aware of their seed service and will likely use that as well but regardless, it won't be enough. it will be a huge head start though. my connection is slow and has a cap so here is what i intent to do if possible:

 

i will initially create an account on a friend's computer. send him data on an external drive and have him upload it. i would have to send him the external drive multiple times. once everything is uploaded, i will adopt it on my unraid box and do incremental backups from my slow connection. i will definitely talk to support about the feasibility of this.

Speeds around 3.5-4 are typical for Crashplan unfortunately. You might want to check out Crashplan's forum for some more about speeds.

https://helpdesk.crashplan.com/entries/21660011-very-slow-upload-speeds?page=5