What storage software could I run to have an archive of my personal files (a couple TB of photos) that doesn’t require I keep a full local copy of all the data? I like the idea of a simple and focused tool like Syncthing, but they seem to be angling towards replication.
Is the simple choice to run some S3-like backend and use CLI or other client to append and browse files? I’d love something with fault tolerance that someone can gradually add disks to. If ceph were either less complicated or used less resources I’d want to do that.
So i understood you just want some local storage system with some fault tolerance.
ZFS will do that. Nothing fancy, just volumes as either blockdevice or ZFS filesystem.
If you want something more fancy, maybe even distributed, check out storage cluster systems with erasure coding, less storage wasted than with pure replication, though comes at reconstruction cost if something goes wrong.
MinIO comes to mind, tough i never used it… my requirements seem to be so rare, these tools only get close :/
afaik you can add more disks and nodes more or less dynamically with it.
Yeah it’s hard to find something that perfectly fits just what you want. I think it’s better if I do something simple like ZFS and maybe some kind of file server on top.
I use Borg Backup to a Hetzner storage box but doing the same thing to a disk array would work fine. How much data are you talking about? What is the usage picture? Backup and archiving are really not the same thing.
I was looking at Borg but that’s one of the tools where it seems like I need the entire replicated copy of the dataset locally to add more. I believe Borg can open a view into previous versions of the data, so it’s technically append only, but I’d find that process tedious.
These are a couple TB and mostly photos I’ve taken. I’d like to be able to browse and edit at some point, but my primary concern right now is keeping a copy of everything.
Yeah that’s more of an archive than a backup scenario. I have a small self hosted Nextcloud that I use for stuff like that. For a few TB, you might consider Hetzner Storage Cloud which is really Nextcloud. It is backed up daily which is a help.
As I remember, setting it up was kind of a pain, but once runnnig it hasn’t neded attention. I don’t use the fancy apps. Also, by now there might be an apt package or docker container or something of that sort. I haven’t used their fancy apps much. My main use of it is to upload photos from my phone so I can access them from other devices.
Another user said it - what your asking for isn’t a backup, it’s just data transfer.
It sounds like you’re looking for a storage backend that hosts all your data and can download data to the client side on the fly.
If your use case is Windows, Nextcloud Desktop may be what you looking for. I have a similar setup with the game clips folder. It detects changes and auto uploads then, while deleting less recently used data that’s properly server side. This feature might be in Mac but I haven’t tested it.
Backup wise, I capture an rsync of the nextcloud database and filesystem server-side and store it on a different chassis. That then gets backed up again to a USB drive I can grab and run.
All of my machines back up to my home server’s RAID over WebDAV with Nephele.
Then every few days I’ll manually sync them to a server at my parents’ house with a single huge HDD using rsync. I do this manually so that if anything happens to my home server (like ransomware) it doesn’t mirror destroyed data.
Since the Nephele share is just WebDAV, I can mount it locally and move things into it that I don’t want local anymore.
I created Nephele, and I just finished writing an encryption plugin. I wrote it because I’m also going to write an S3 adapter. That way, you can store things in S3, but they’ll be encrypted, so Amazon can’t see them.
Protection against if it happens and they have not noticed within those few days. Probably especially important if they leave the system running while on vacation.
This is really cool. I ended up trying something similar: serving from a ZFS pool with SeaweedFS. TBD if that’s going to work for me long term.
I would definitely be able to manually sync the SeaweedFS files with rsync to another location but from what I see it requires me to use their software to make sense of any structure. I might be able to mount it and sync that way, hopefully performance for that is not too bad.
Syncing like that and having more control over where the files are placed on the RAID is very cool.
On windows it supports thin sync (meaning that it keep a reference to the file instead of the whole file), on Linux not yet, as it is still in alpha (but you can just connect it as a remote disk and be done with it. That’s how I do with mines).
If you don’t want the whole Nextcloud, there are standalone cli WebDAV servers.
Where will the target be? Online or local? Rsync is really easy to use and the target files are browse-able. I could be too dense but I find online buckets aren’t easily browse-able. Even a homemade NAS might be a good choice and it’s easily scalable.
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Punch cards. Is it the best no but no one is going to bother to steal my data. Encryption through inconvenience
Do a riffle shuffle to make them even more secure!
So i understood you just want some local storage system with some fault tolerance.
ZFS will do that. Nothing fancy, just volumes as either blockdevice or ZFS filesystem.
If you want something more fancy, maybe even distributed, check out storage cluster systems with erasure coding, less storage wasted than with pure replication, though comes at reconstruction cost if something goes wrong.
MinIO comes to mind, tough i never used it… my requirements seem to be so rare, these tools only get close :/
afaik you can add more disks and nodes more or less dynamically with it.
Yeah it’s hard to find something that perfectly fits just what you want. I think it’s better if I do something simple like ZFS and maybe some kind of file server on top.
sshfs
Not.
I use Borg Backup to a Hetzner storage box but doing the same thing to a disk array would work fine. How much data are you talking about? What is the usage picture? Backup and archiving are really not the same thing.
I was looking at Borg but that’s one of the tools where it seems like I need the entire replicated copy of the dataset locally to add more. I believe Borg can open a view into previous versions of the data, so it’s technically append only, but I’d find that process tedious.
These are a couple TB and mostly photos I’ve taken. I’d like to be able to browse and edit at some point, but my primary concern right now is keeping a copy of everything.
Yeah that’s more of an archive than a backup scenario. I have a small self hosted Nextcloud that I use for stuff like that. For a few TB, you might consider Hetzner Storage Cloud which is really Nextcloud. It is backed up daily which is a help.
How was it setting up and running Nextcloud? I’m very curious about their office software, looks fun.
As I remember, setting it up was kind of a pain, but once runnnig it hasn’t neded attention. I don’t use the fancy apps. Also, by now there might be an apt package or docker container or something of that sort. I haven’t used their fancy apps much. My main use of it is to upload photos from my phone so I can access them from other devices.
What platform?
Another user said it - what your asking for isn’t a backup, it’s just data transfer.
It sounds like you’re looking for a storage backend that hosts all your data and can download data to the client side on the fly.
If your use case is Windows, Nextcloud Desktop may be what you looking for. I have a similar setup with the game clips folder. It detects changes and auto uploads then, while deleting less recently used data that’s properly server side. This feature might be in Mac but I haven’t tested it.
Backup wise, I capture an rsync of the nextcloud database and filesystem server-side and store it on a different chassis. That then gets backed up again to a USB drive I can grab and run.
Nextcloud also supports external storage, which the server directly connects to: https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/configuration_files/external_storage_configuration_gui.html
removed by mod
rsync and another hard drive
All of my machines back up to my home server’s RAID over WebDAV with Nephele.
Then every few days I’ll manually sync them to a server at my parents’ house with a single huge HDD using rsync. I do this manually so that if anything happens to my home server (like ransomware) it doesn’t mirror destroyed data.
Since the Nephele share is just WebDAV, I can mount it locally and move things into it that I don’t want local anymore.
I created Nephele, and I just finished writing an encryption plugin. I wrote it because I’m also going to write an S3 adapter. That way, you can store things in S3, but they’ll be encrypted, so Amazon can’t see them.
Wouldn’t syncing automatically every few days give you the same protection though?
Protection against if it happens and they have not noticed within those few days. Probably especially important if they leave the system running while on vacation.
I’m assuming I would notice, because none of my services on the machine would work anymore.
This is really cool. I ended up trying something similar: serving from a ZFS pool with SeaweedFS. TBD if that’s going to work for me long term.
I would definitely be able to manually sync the SeaweedFS files with rsync to another location but from what I see it requires me to use their software to make sense of any structure. I might be able to mount it and sync that way, hopefully performance for that is not too bad.
Syncing like that and having more control over where the files are placed on the RAID is very cool.
You could run a WebDAV server, like Nextcloud.
On windows it supports thin sync (meaning that it keep a reference to the file instead of the whole file), on Linux not yet, as it is still in alpha (but you can just connect it as a remote disk and be done with it. That’s how I do with mines).
If you don’t want the whole Nextcloud, there are standalone cli WebDAV servers.
I like restic, it’ll do deduplication and compression, it can backup to s3 or ssh or locally.
Where will the target be? Online or local? Rsync is really easy to use and the target files are browse-able. I could be too dense but I find online buckets aren’t easily browse-able. Even a homemade NAS might be a good choice and it’s easily scalable.