nat traversal for cheap backups

[Gordon Child]

Hi friends,
Slightly off topic, but I figured this would be of interest to others. I'm thinking about creating a project that would allow backups to a home base via the internet. Similar to how some of the online backup systems work (carbonite, crashplan, mozy), but on the cheap because the backup server would exist in your home or workplace.

The idea is that backups would be
1. daily
2. backed up to a home machine
3. "just work" no matter where you are and even if the backup server is behind a NAT with no ports routed and no UPNP using STUN/TURN/ICE and perhaps libjingle.
4. Possibly deduplicated with the ability to go back to a particular day for a backup.

I was thinking about having a simple backup box using just a raspberry pi with a couple external drives.

If such a project already exists then maybe someone has heard of it or something similar. I'd also like to know if anyone else would think that something like this would be useful.

Thanks,
Gordon

[Ben Mabey]

I'd take a look at FreeNAS, I think it covers most of your use cases (not sure about #3).  Knowing the internet someone has probably gotten it running on a rasperry pi as well. :)

-Ben

[Sean Mikkelsen]

I would suggest looking at freenas also. One thing though, is that it is suggested to have 1gb or more memory for every tb of disk space you plan to use on it. I am in process of building a nas using freenas. So far I like it a lot. You can utilize zfs, and use redundancy with software raids (so you don't need expensive raid controllers).

I would highly doubt a pi would hold up and do what you want. I've had both the 256 mb and 512 mb model. I've put 3 different os's on, and the thing can barely power a wireless keyboard dongle. I've gone through like 6 different power sources trying to find one that will be optimal, but no change. If I view system load while doing some of the most basic things (like opening a browser), it wraps out pretty quickly. I would not rely on a pi for backing up my stuff, but i'm also interested to see if anyone else has done that with a pi.

Hope that helps!

FYI, Amazon has a really good deal on a nice nas box (amazon deal of the day).

http://www.amazon.com/Drobo-Storage-Gigabit-Ethernet-DRDS4A21/dp/B00AMAJGOO/ref=xs_gb_A18YJ64THL61RB?_encoding=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=441937901&pf_rd_s=right-1&pf_rd_t=701&pf_rd_i=20&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=05F6JJQA8GKYPERDQ19F

 and Newegg has a killer deal on some 3tb drives right now:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822149396

So good day to do it I guess!  160 dollars off raid box, and about 30 dollars off each drive you get.

 

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[Peter Hamilton]

Look at AeroFS. (I work there)

:)

[Sean Mikkelsen]

I'll have to look into that more. Quick question though, what is the continuity cost for if it is all on your own server?

[Peter Hamilton]

The model is that you provide storage, we provide a scalable user experience. There's a lot more to file syncing than just providing storage. While the product will actually work disconnected from our system (via TCP multicast), our system handles signaling for STUN and a fallback dumb relay server (data is encrypted end to end) in the event that STUN fails. Then we handle authentication of new clients and authorization when sharing individual folders between multiple users (including kicking out and remote wiping said files from clients when necessary). Throw in support and updates and we think we've got a fairly valuable product.

In any case, it is free for teams of up to 3.

[Jamison Dance]

There is also a local company, SpaceMonkey, that is doing similar "private cloud" things. They provide the hardware for a one-time fee, and then I think you pay a subscription fee to access your data. They use some fancy encoding algorithms to replicate portions of your encrypted data across a bunch of customers, so you get some backup support.

[John Adamson]

Its more work to build out your own thing, but also more enjoyable. I'm running a SmartOS (illumos) setup with a raidz2. I have one zone dedicated to AFP for Time Machine allocation to each machine and locations with a non-capped size for archival storage, NFS in the global zone, and then a zone for a media server. From there I have the volumes going up to CrashPlan in the case our house burns down. I know way too many people who have lost video and photos of family, so if you do it, make sure you have backup in addition to redundancy. Remote WAN access is provided via VPN tunneling to get to whatever I need whenever I need it.

As others have said, FreeNAS is also great. If you like that idea of a nice point and click interface, also give Napp-it a look: http://www.napp-it.org/. That works well with OmniOS and there is also an image that works on an HP MicroServer right out of the box. If you do go ZFS, there are best practices around stripe width, 4k sectors, memory, and the optimal number of drives for raidz vs raidz2, so just make sure you know what you want before you build it.

[Adrian Madrid]

You might want to look at aerofs. It is dropbox but you do your own storage.

Adrian Madrid
aema...@gmail.com

On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 9:44 AM, sellis <stephen...@gmail.com> wrote:

If you choose to make your own, you might want to leverage rsync.  It's hard to beat its efficiency, which is why so many backup solutions use it.  Personally, I use a combination of CrashPlan and BackupPC (depending on which machine it is).  Crashplan allows free transfers between computers even across the internet, and it encrypts before sending, which is a huge factor for me in deciding on backup tools.  It even has a CLI version, although unsupported.

On Monday, April 8, 2013 3:37:35 PM UTC-6, GordonChild wrote:

--

[Jamison Dance]

An employee of Aero responded above. :)

[Peter Hamilton]

In the mouth of two or three witnesses... 

:)

[Adrian Madrid]

Man, missed that!

Adrian Madrid
aema...@gmail.com