Remote BackUp Solutions....

[Samir Faci]

Hi all, 

   I was debating a remote offsite solution and was wondering if anyone had thoughts on the topic.  I was looking at CrashPlan which gives me an unlimited storage for $60/year.  

My main concern is privacy and security.  Anything I put on drive/dropbox that I care about I go through the steps on encrypting it first.  So in theory crashplan is encrypted...but still the idea of dropping my entire computer on the cloud feels a bit eery.

Has anyone used similar services before? any thoughts / concerns?

--

Thank you
Samir Faci

[bil Jeschke]

Spider Oak encrypts everything before it gets sent, so it is always encrypted, and they have no keys so cannot uenecrypt it for anyone not even you if you forget your password.

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[Tom Yarrish]

+1 for SpiderOak, I use that service for anything I need to back up but I want secured.  I got an unlimited backup deal from them about two years ago that was $125 a year or something like that.

One downside (which is just a side effect of how they do security) is it doesn't have all the flexibility of a Dropbox/Google Drive.  So for example I'd love to put my Keypass database on it, but then I have no way to access it on my mobile devices.

PGP Key ID - B32585D0

[Jeff Yamada]

+2 for SpiderOak. Their customer support is pretty good too.

[Oleg Brodkin]

Tom,

I've just checked out SpiderOak, they do have mobile clients?

Oleg

...

>
> One downside (which is just a side effect of how they do security) is it
> doesn't have all the flexibility of a Dropbox/Google Drive. So for example
> I'd love to put my Keypass database on it, but then I have no way to access
> it on my mobile devices.
>
>

...

[Tom Yarrish]

Yes they have a mobile client, but there's no API (I guess) where I can access it from another application.  So I have no way (that I've seen) say to open my KeePass app on my mobile device and tell it to look on SpiderOak for the file to open.

Tom

PGP Key ID - B32585D0

[Carl Karsten]

I need a lesson in this encrypted remote storage stuff.

It seems odd to me that the encryption is tied to the storage service.

I would think there are two things you need:

1. client side thing to manage en/decrypting a stream (so on the fly as it reads and writes somewhere)

2. some remote place to store a wad of bytes.

--

Carl K

[Izzy]

We use Crashplan as our backup solution. Mind you I work at a government site and backup data for scientific computers that has sensitive data on it. Hope this helps

[Samir Faci]

SpiderOak Looks interesting though I was amused by google ad when I did a google search.

"Still using SpiderOak? - Get better security & less hassle‎"  (Linking to: https://tresorit.com/ ) 

@Carl:

Unless my understanding is wrong...the idea is that upstream has jibberish... it gets bytes to store... it's a blackbox.  Gets data in and gets data out but has no idea what it's storing.

Client on receiving end can take the jibberish and convert it to coherent data.  If the user forgets the password or whatnot...then it's jibberish  and can't decrypted.

At least that's my rudimentary understanding of it.  In a way I wish google drive would do this as well... or pick your remote solution

Thank you
Samir Faci

[Tom Yarrish]

IIRC the technology that SpiderOak uses is open source (or some part of it is).  I remember they had something on Github related to their service.

Tom

PGP Key ID - B32585D0

[Joe Digilio]

I've heard good things about Tarsnap
https://www.tarsnap.com/

-Joe

On Fri, Nov 27, 2015 at 11:01 AM, Samir Faci <sa...@esamir.com> wrote:

[Samir Faci]

yup.  I appreciate any company that has a half decent github page.

https://github.com/SpiderOak

[Carl Karsten]

That doesn't explain why the two seem tied together.

But maybe capitalism does.  If you develop a client lib that works with whatever storage service, (S3, rackspace, Joes key value store) the storage service gets to charge and if you stop paying you stop having access to your data.  If the client lib is independent of that, kinda hard to make money.    So make a lib that is tied to storage, and sell storage.

Does this work with everyone's mental model?

On Fri, Nov 27, 2015 at 12:03 PM, Samir Faci <sa...@esamir.com> wrote:

--

Carl K

[Greg Neumarke]

I use crashplan and home and recommend it widely. It can also simultaneously back up to an external hard drive, network share, or a friend running the crashplan software.

As for the encryption, you can use the default encryption which I'm guessing allows them to do some de-duping of the backups on their end, or you can choose your own encryption key and password. Everything gets encrypted before it is stored with Crashplan.

https://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/4/Configuring/Security_Encryption_And_Password_Options

look at the "custom key" option:

Do Code42's servers create, maintain, or save my encryption key for me?

CrashPlan offers three options for securing the archive encryption key for your backup. The answer depends on your Archive Encryption setting. 

• Standard encryption (default): When you install the CrashPlan app, an encryption key is securely generated for your account. The key is escrowed on Code42's servers for authentication during web restores and installations on new devices. 
• Archive key password: The key generated by the CrashPlan app is secured with a secondary password, known as your archive key password. Only the secured key is stored on Code42's servers for authentication during web restores and installations on new devices.
• Custom key: The original encryption key generated by the CrashPlan app is replaced with an encryption key you choose. Code42's servers never escrow the encryption key when using a custom key. This means that if you lose or forget your encryption key, your backup data cannot be restored and our Customer Champions cannot assist with recovery.

-Greg

On Fri, Nov 27, 2015 at 11:01 AM, Samir Faci <sa...@esamir.com> wrote:

--

[Samir Faci]

Thanks, this is pretty slick.

[Samir Faci]

@Carl:

Cloud backup isn't about a library it's about the whole solution and array of tools.  If you just want a crypto library there's a few different solutions and they all work fairly well.

Heck, encfs works great for all OS (though it has some limitations).  You can encrypt your data and it's irrelevant what your fs it is.

This isn't meant to be a library.  I want the reliability I want access to my data from any device...all of that is well worth the $5/mo.  

At least IMO.  You could also do all this stuff on your own...manage your own servers and take backups....which involves time I don't have to spend.

[Carl Karsten]

 Hmm.. I am still missing something.

for local backup,
I buy a storage device.  taps/reader, CDs/Burner, external hard drive, NAS, etc.

They all have published APIs for how software (libs, apps, whatever) can read/write data.

Then I pick out software to backup my data to the device.

I would think remote backup is similar. 

I do remember a long time ago having tape backup software that was bundled whit the tape hardware, but that was a long time ago, and I can kinda see that hardware maybe has unique features that need to be exposed to the UI so there is no point in trying to use anything else that doesn't support that.

Hmm.. Drobo raid array... it has windows drivers and seems you need to use them.  Although I was told never to use it for anything with any OS cuz even as designed it isn't reliable.  So not sure this counts.   But maybe there are other things that do count.

[Richard Reina]

I am still backing up my DBs and files with a DDS tape drive. Guess I need to get with the times...

[Larry Garfield]

Are you looking for live-access, Dropbox style, or are you looking for disaster recovery?

If you want Dropbox that isn't Dropbox, Inc, you can setup your own ownCloud server (https://owncloud.org/) or use any of the many ownCloud hosts (https://owncloud.org/providers/) on the market.  I've been running an ownCloud server in my basement since January and it's fairly nice.  Clients for Linux, Mac, Windows, and Android.  (Not sure about iOS.)  I believe you can encrypt on the server, although I've not toyed with that.

If you're looking for disaster recovery, live-access isn't relevant.  Secure ability to recover the data once you've gotten a new hard drive is. :-)  I'm assuming that's what CrashPlan and SpiderOak offer?

(I have my laptop backing up my Documents folder and a few other things to my ownCloud server, so that's one layer of recovery in addition to live mirroring.  I'm looking for an offsite backup service for the ownCloud server itself, too, though, so I'm quite interested in this topic.)

--Larry Garfield

[Samir Faci]

@larry:

SpiderOak is interesting.  It's speaks highly of the importance of security from both what I've read, this thread, and articles.  They provide a free 2 GB or something along those lines of space.  So my 'dropbox' has been replaced by them for the time being.

I'm on the fence on CrashPlan vs. SpiderOak.  The whole idea of replacing their encryption key is pretty slick.  So in theory even they won't be able to see what data I have.  

For $5/month or something peace of mind against me doing something completely idiotic is nice.  I also like that you can use the app to backup from one machine to another.  So keey a folder on your desktop with lots of space that's 'laptop_backup' and let the background app keep that in sync, then just pay for the 1 machine to backup your entire desktop that includes the laptop.

My main issue with SpiderOak is the price.  

$12/mo  ($144/yr )  gives you 1 TB with SpiderOak.

$5/mo  ($60/yr ) gives you unlimited storage with CrashPlan.  

For now, I generated a ridiculous crypto key and went with crashplan.  Or will once my 30 day trial expires.  

Just my 2 cents.  Try them out and see what works for you.  

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[Samir Faci]

(Oh, as to your question that skipped right over)

I am looking for cold storage/disaster recovery.  I like owncloud though it feels very green compared to the google ecosystem, but it's nice to have.  

Some of these cold storage do provide you access to your backups via mobile, navigate your 'backup' and potentially pull individual files/folders for viewing/retrieval.

Basically what I was getting at, it does a lot more then just a remote rsync.  

[RCRam...@gldd.com]

Hi Samir,

 

I just saw your query. I use CrashPlan on my Ubuntu system. Pros: Works well once running, sends me email with status, I can get at the files through the app from remote sites, supports a local backup, as well as “backup to a friend” feature than I don’t use but find intriguing. On the crypto end, they have a feature to use a very large key that they do not know (so if you lose it they cannot help you).

 

Con: They introduced a bug with the 4.1 update that took me longer than I want to admit to track down. The solution was downloading the oracle Java version and installing in their program directory. As with much software it takes more work on Linux than on Win or OSX.

 

Robert

[Samir Faci]

Thanks for the feedback Robert.

I've been using for a few weeks now.  Mostly taking advantage of their trial.  It took them a few weeks to finish up my backup of my laptop but I like it so far.  I'm using a custom key for increased security.  

I also like the backup to external drive and such features.  I haven't spent enough time to really be comfortable with it and all the gotchas, but it looks pretty good so far.

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[Larry Garfield]

"I've been using for a few weeks now."  Using which one?  Perhaps THE most important noun in your entire message is missing! :-)

--Larry Garfield

[Samir Faci]

Oh... oops. Actually both. But I was referring to CrashPlan since it
was mainly responding to Robert in that particular email. I"m using
SpiderOak as a dropbox replacement since they seem to have a similar
service giving me 2 GB for free. Since I trust their privacy/crypto
more then dropbox, I figured I'd drop the sync this up in a SpiderOak.
Though like I said... their prices are just too excessive. Google
Drive right now is $1.99/mo for 100GB. SpiderOak is $7.99/mo for 30
GB. The cost per mb difference is pretty apparent compared to
virtually any service.



CrashPlan I've been using to backup my laptop. I've also used it as
an app since I can backup to external drives, remotely etc. It's a
fairly decent application that is cross platform. Like I said I need
to spend more time with it but it looks fairly decent.

The biggest issue I have with CrashPlan is that it's a data backup not
an OS backup. So it's not the equivalent of clonezilla (or ghost or
whatever people use these days).

I can backup my $HOME but in order to restore, I'd need to restore the
base the OS and start the restore process.

Actually that's sort of what my initial issue was. I was looking for
something to do a full disk image and clonezilla wasn't behaving with
OS X. (in my case at least )

Anyways, that's my 2 cents.

[W Scott Lockwood III]

Coming in a bit late to the party, but we've had excellent luck with
Amanda Backup and S3 from Amazon. Not sure if that's more or less
expensive than the other options listed here, but it has worked well and
been very reliable. There are also over the wire services from people
like Iron Mountain.

W. Scott Lockwood III

[Andrew Close]

Samir,

I've been happily using CrashPlan for ~2 years now.  I do full clone backups with Carbon Copy Cloner from Bombich Software - http://bombich.com

Andrew Close

[Samir Faci]

@Scott: Well, CrashPlan has plans around $5/mo for unlimited storage.
I'm pretty sure that's more affordable then S3 storage.

Unless my math is off...

Let's say 2 TB which is a reasonable size for a Desktop backup where I
drop my laptop snapshot on some folder.

S3 Pricing:
First 1 TB / month$0.0300 per GB$0.0125 per GB$0.007 per GB


2 TB ==> 2048GB * 0.0300 ==> $60ish dollars a month. Too steep for home user.

@AndrewClose:

I'll look at Carbon Copy Cloner. Thanks for the info on CrashPlan.

[W Scott Lockwood III]

If you find me a home user who regularly uses 2TB a month, I will eat my hat. :) I am backing up multiple (22) KVM images for a full production environment for a business and I don't use even a quarter of that. :)

[Samir Faci]

Well this is my current usage: 2.1 TB. bon appetite.

plus on top of that I need to backup my laptop on there.. so I'm a
"home" user that would like to back up all of
it as a remote storage. That being said... i'm a nerdy home user so
I'm not the normal use case.



/dev/md3 3.6T 2.1T 1.5T 59% /volume2

[W Scott Lockwood III]

Wow, what on earth are you backing up in there!?

[Matthew Kurowski]

"Hybrid users" use 2TB/month.  ;-)

I use a combination of things for live replication and backups but ultimately dump to crashplan and Amazon. I use AWS for a few Linux machines that need to be up but that costs more than Crashplan, Dropbox and Prime/Amazon Cloud plans combined.

Mac Macbooks at home also get CCC copies and dump to time machine locally and on the net which then goes offsite via Crashplan.

Cheers

[Trev Peterson]

Anyone with a video collection (movies, TV, etc) can hit 2TB pretty
easy. Many family and friends have ripped their DVD collections and
now serve them out to roku boxes from a linux server. Many collections
are around 1.5 - 2 GB range and a couple over if I recall correctly.
Video is big especially 1080p rips.

Trev Peterson
Advanced Reality
Email: tr...@advanced-reality.com
Phone: +1 847 406 9018

[Samir Faci]

I have a friend who just had a kid AND is into photography.  You don't even need video to hit 2TB.  A ton of photos all in RAW format

will hit that mark pretty fast as well.

Though yes, HiDPI videos will add up like crazy in no time.

[Keith T. Garner]

Can confirm, have a metric buttload of RAW photos.

Also, +1000 to Crashplan.  I've been using them for about a year now, and love the fact that irreplaceable data like said RAW photos are backed up locally as well as out of my house in case of fire, hellmouth opening, etc.  I got the 10 computer/family plan, and tossed my parents, my inlaws, and my grandparent's computers on.  Totally worth it.

That said, between all those listed, it's only 1.7TB of data, not a full 2.  :)  1.3TB of that is me, though.

Keith

-- 

 Keith T. Garner                                        kga...@kgarner.com

                "Make no little plans; they have no magic to

                   stir men's blood." - Daniel H. Burnham

[W Scott Lockwood III]

On Wed, Dec 30, 2015 at 8:29 AM, Keith T. Garner <kga...@kgarner.com> wrote:
> Can confirm, have a metric buttload of RAW photos.
>
> Also, +1000 to Crashplan. I've been using them for about a year now, and
> love the fact that irreplaceable data like said RAW photos are backed up
> locally as well as out of my house in case of fire, hellmouth opening, etc.
> I got the 10 computer/family plan, and tossed my parents, my inlaws, and my
> grandparent's computers on. Totally worth it.
>
> That said, between all those listed, it's only 1.7TB of data, not a full 2.
> :) 1.3TB of that is me, though.
>
> Keith

But, Keith, do you generate that volume of data every month? I would
assume you do differentials after fulls, right?

[Samir Faci]

Oh, I didn't mean you'd generate that much storage monthly.... just total use.  Unless they have some cold storage concept, you'd still be charged the full space usage on s3 on a monthly basis, wouldn't you?

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[W Scott Lockwood III]

On 12/30/2015 9:10 AM, Samir Faci wrote:
> Oh, I didn't mean you'd generate that much storage monthly.... just
> total use. Unless they have some cold storage concept, you'd still be
> charged the full space usage on s3 on a monthly basis, wouldn't you?

That's a good question actually. I'm not sure. We have a _lot_ of data
going there besides our own, also customer data, so it changes every
month for us, goes up, goes down. I'll have to ask.

I don't handle that side (money). From an engineering standpoint, it's
great, it's very easy to integrate with Amanda backup. That's one of the
reasons I like it. I bet it would be equally easy to with some of the
other products mentioned too. I just don't have any first hand knowledge
of them like I do S3.

And yes, for hat eating purposes, I meant a home user who did 2TB a
month, not total. :-)

A lot of what Amazon charges for is the data going in and out. Once
that's there, I believe your charges reduce substantially to just the
data storage rates which are pennies on the gigabyte if I recall correctly.

[Samir Faci]

Oh jeez.  Yeah, there is no way in hell i can generate 2 TB a month.  S3 is great though like i said, i never had to pay for it....if you're being frugal it's not exactly the cheapest solution. 

Oh well, I'll have to dig into that.  amanda + S3 will be my alternative to look into.

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[Keith T. Garner]

> On Dec 30, 2015, at 8:45 AM, W Scott Lockwood III <vladi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> But, Keith, do you generate that volume of data every month? I would
> assume you do differentials after fulls, right?

Oh, as samir pointed out, I missed that point. :) Yes, not a new 2TB every month.

I was curious about the amanda/s3 thing last time I ran amanda, but at this point, the braindead simpleness of crashplan is a win for me.

Keith

[W Scott Lockwood III]

On 12/30/2015 10:04 AM, Keith T. Garner wrote:
>> >On Dec 30, 2015, at 8:45 AM, W Scott Lockwood III<vladi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >But, Keith, do you generate that volume of data every month? I would
>> >assume you do differentials after fulls, right?
> Oh, as samir pointed out, I missed that point.:) Yes, not a new 2TB every month.
>
> I was curious about the amanda/s3 thing last time I ran amanda, but at this point, the braindead simpleness of crashplan is a win for me.
>
> Keith

Since more than one seems interested, here are the basic configs we use
and deploy via puppet, and then season to taste:

#Amanda main amanda.conf file
org "YourServerName-Master"
mailto "yo...@email.addy.here"
dumpcycle 1 day
runspercycle 1
tapecycle 5 tapes
runtapes 1
tpchanger "chg-multi"
tapedev "null:"
changerfile "/etc/amanda/DailySet1/changer.conf"
logdir "/etc/amanda/DailySet1/log" # log directory
tapetype S3
device_property "S3_ACCESS_KEY" "********************"
device_property "S3_SECRET_KEY" "****************************************"

holdingdisk hd2 {
directory "/var/lib/amanda/holdings/DailySet1"
use -1 Gb
}

label_new_tapes "DailySet1-%"
labelstr "^DailySet1-[0-9]"

dtimeout 1800
ctimeout 30
etimeout 300

define dumptype global {
comment "Global definitions"
auth "local"
exclude list "/etc/amanda/DailySet1/excludes"
}

define dumptype root-tar {
global
program "GNUTAR"
comment "root partitions dumped with tar"
compress none
index
priority low
}

define dumptype comp-root-tar {
root-tar
comment "Root partitions with compression dumped with tar"
compress client fast
}

define tapetype HARDDISK {
comment "Virtual Tapes"
length 5000 mbytes
}

define tapetype S3 {
comment "S3 Bucket"
length 400 gigabytes
blocksize 64 megabytes
}

includefile "./advanced.conf"



# Amanda advanced.conf file:
dumpuser "amandabackup"
inparallel 4
dumporder "sssS"
taperalgo first
displayunit "g"
netusage 51200 Kbps
bumpsize 20 Mb
bumppercent 20
bumpdays 1
usetimestamps yes
device_output_buffer_size 1280k

## label_new_tapes "DailySet1-%%%"

maxdumpsize -1
amrecover_do_fsf yes
amrecover_check_label yes
bumpmult 4

amrecover_changer "changer"

autoflush no

infofile "/var/db/amanda/DailySet1/curinfo"
logdir "/var/log/amanda/DailySet1"
indexdir "/var/db/amanda/DailySet1/index"

define interface local {
comment "a local disk"
use 8000 kbps