Online backup for Ubuntu server

damo24

I support a small business which uses an Ubuntu server (10.04 32 bit) as a file server which is access from Windows machines. The server is headless and is accessed through Webmin.

Can anyone recommend an automated online backup solution. I have looked at Carbonite and Livedrive but they only seem to work on Windows machines and will not backup network drives. As there is around 500Gb of data on the server and money is an important factor I would rather not go down the route of Amazon S3 or equivalent as the costs will be prohibitively high.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Owain_Moneysaver

How much of that 500GB data changes frequently?

Could you buy your own network attached storage and plug it in at home, and access it across tinternet?

damo24

In an average month somewhere between 50 and 100Gb will change. I am hoping to install a similar server (this time running the 64 bit version) for another company soon so unfortunately running the back-ups from home is not really an option.

Thanks for the thought though.

weegie.geek

500GB will be expensive from any of the mainstream backup providers.

http://www.datastorageunit.com/pricing

I've no idea how fast/stable that company are, (or where their servers are, and what kinda speed you'll get from/to them) but I noticed them while looking around. They seem like a helpful bunch so it's worth contacting them to see how much it'd cost you.

Failing that, there's always the option of renting a cheap dedicated server (OVH is always well priced), or a VPS if you can find one with enough space, and backing up onto it.

edit: you posted while I was typing. If you're going to get this kinda thing happening quite often, it might be worth you getting yourself a large-ish box at OVH (4TB space for just over 50 quid a month or 10TB for 160-ish).

Considering how much amazon etc charge, 2TB (given raid1) for 25 quid per TB per month is dirt cheap.

damo24

Thanks, I've e-mailed them and will see what they say. Hopefully the price won't be too ridiculous.

weegie.geek

I'd ask for a test account too. Routing/peering between them and the source might be awful. I'm assuming that pricing in $ = .US company = .US servers, but that isn't always the case. If it's West coast then you might find speeds are uselessly low.

tronator

damo24 wrote: »

I support a small business which uses an Ubuntu server (10.04 32 bit) as a file server which is access from Windows machines. The server is headless and is accessed through Webmin.

Can anyone recommend an automated online backup solution. I have looked at Carbonite and Livedrive but they only seem to work on Windows machines and will not backup network drives. As there is around 500Gb of data on the server and money is an important factor I would rather not go down the route of Amazon S3 or equivalent as the costs will be prohibitively high.

Thanks in advance for your help.

I guess the best option would be to get the cheapest root server (doesn't need too much power or RAM), setup a rsync script over ssh and run it every night as a cronjob. Something like this

rsync -avzPe 'ssh' /local/files remote.server:/backup/dir

The first backup will take some time depending on your Internet connection. You also should keep in mind how long it will take you to get your files back in case of an emergency. Maybe a server in a data center where you have physical access would be better. Don't know how much this would cost though.

weegie.geek

Quick physical access might be a problem tbh, there aren't too many datacentres around, and the further from London you get, the more expensive they are. If the business/the OP isn't in that region, it might become prohibitively expensive to rent/colocate there. More expensive than S3, most likely.

To get physical access you'd probably have to colocate as well, I can't see many dedicated server providers letting you near their racks, so in that case you're paying for their tech to copy the data for you when you go to the datacentre. That's a real worst case scenario though, of course.

Redundancy + backup on site, offsite dedicated server for a secondary backup. Gets more and more complicated the more you think about it, eh?