BackupPC

[TSM]

I've been contemplating setting up a backup server recently.  I've looked at some of the various options mentioned on the board like crashplan and rsync.  Googling rsync showed me a few other options that expand upon rsync's capabilities.  One that's particularly interesting to me is BackupPC.

 

There are some older posts on the forum about BackupPC, but nothing recently.  I'm curious if anyone out there is quietly using it successfully without posting on the forums about it.  I'd also like to hear from some of the folks on here who might have more expertise than me as far as what it's drawbacks might be in comparison to Crashplan for example.

 

If it can be made to work with unraid(I'm sure a smarter person than I could get it to work easily), it looks like it might have a smaller memory footprint than crashplan, and it looks to also implement some pretty impressive compression and deduplication features.

 

http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/index.html

 

[boof]

I'm not sure how much this helps, but I did used to use. Stopped a year or so ago.

 

No problems with it - it did what it said on the tin and was a smart bit of software. It got quite I/O intensive when churning through backup maintenance though. To be expected.

 

I replaced it with crashplan on the same machine (mostly triggered by a move from FreeBSD -> Linux on that host which let me run crashplan properly)

[TSM]

I'm not sure how much this helps, but I did used to use. Stopped a year or so ago.

 

No problems with it - it did what it said on the tin and was a smart bit of software. It got quite I/O intensive when churning through backup maintenance though. To be expected.

 

I replaced it with crashplan on the same machine (mostly triggered by a move from FreeBSD -> Linux on that host which let me run crashplan properly)

Thanks Boof, Helps a lot.  I guess at this point Crashplan is the defacto unraid standard application for a highly configurable backup solution.

 

I'm thinking I know the answer to this question, since you are currently using Crashplan, but which do you like better?  Which is easier to administer on a daily basis?  Which is easier to fine tune the behavior of?  To me it looks like you might be able to run BackupPC natively on unraid, instead of a docker like crashplan.  Is that how you did it?  Did you have instances with either where you actually had to restore a backed up file?  What was the experience like? 

 

I also like the fact with BackupPC that it doesn't require a client running on the machine being backed up. 

 

Not an issue for me, but may be for some.  I read on crashplan's site that if an identical file exists on 2 computers, being backed up by crashplan, that crashplan will have 2 separate copies of the file.  With BackupPC they say they will only have 1 copy of that file, and links to all the other locations.  Might save some people some disk space. 

[tjnetworking]

Check out my thread I'm trying to get more backup programs put in to Dockers

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=39080.0

 

Look at urbackup and syincrifiy

[boof]

Thanks Boof, Helps a lot.  I guess at this point Crashplan is the defacto unraid standard application for a highly configurable backup solution.

 

I should caveat that my backuppc experience is nothing to do with unraid. It was run on and used to backup other systems.

 

I'm thinking I know the answer to this question, since you are currently using Crashplan, but which do you like better?  Which is easier to administer on a daily basis?  Which is easier to fine tune the behavior of?  To me it looks like you might be able to run BackupPC natively on unraid, instead of a docker like crashplan.  Is that how you did it?  Did you have instances with either where you actually had to restore a backed up file?  What was the experience like? 

 

They're two very different systems for me. Backuppc is very much more your traditional backup service. Full / incremental cycles and with the server doing a pull from the client. You have to run your server and client infrastructure fully.

 

Whereas crashplan is incremental forever and is a push from the client / designed to go to offsite managed storage.

 

Without going to the Pro version of crashplan you also get fully featured restore devolution in backuppc as well which again may suit.

 

To answer specifics :

 

- For unraid / home use? crashplan easily. The benefits of backuppc in certain situations don't really apply to home use and crashplan is more or less 'set and forget'. The ability to peer to peer all the crashplan clients you have under your account to allow machines to backup to each other is also great.

 

- Crashplan is easier to administer. There is less to worry about. But then backuppc does more.

 

- It would depend what behaviour you want to fine tune. Crashplan has options as far as they go but backuppc you get the full source code. So I would have to sya backuppc. It uses rsync on the backend so easy to tweak there as well.

 

- I didn't run backuppc on unraid. I would be wary of trying to do it without docker as it has many dependencies (not least a front facing web stack). I don't see any penalty to running it in docker and there looks to be a few pre-canned images on the docker registry.

 

- Yes, backuppc was run in 'production' and I did have to use it to restore files. It was fine - it gives you a synthetic view of your most recent backups, merging the fulls and incrementals together so it's quite easy. No problems at all.

 

- As above with crashplan. Just for home use but I've restored plenty of times, even if just to test. Again no issues.

 

I'd consider your use case. backuppc is heavyweight and very system intensive on the server component.

 

I also like the fact with BackupPC that it doesn't require a client running on the machine being backed up. 

 

This is true. And crashplan being java doesn't help its cause!

 

Keep in mind though your backuppc server does have to be able to connect to clients with the credentials able to read the files you want backed up. Which may end up being root. Which isn't necessarily ideal.

 

Not an issue for me, but may be for some.  I read on crashplan's site that if an identical file exists on 2 computers, being backed up by crashplan, that crashplan will have 2 separate copies of the file.  With BackupPC they say they will only have 1 copy of that file, and links to all the other locations.  Might save some people some disk space.

 

Crashplan won't dedupe across clients.

 

backuppc lumps everything into one massive storage pool and then  dedupes it. Be warned this is a very intensive operation, particulary on disk i/o. So you may see any benefits wiped out if it cripples your machine for long periods.

 

Crashplan and backuppc are two very different products in my eyes - so much so I'm not even sure their use cases would overlap much. The fuss of having to run and maintain the backuppc server being the biggest differentiator.