NAS backup or similar for a home office PC with robust software

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epr

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#257251 22-Sep-2019 18:18

So looking for a decent, robust backup solution, I would prefer something like an automated backup to a 2 bay NAS that mirrored the drives and had enough security that simple malware couldn't just see it as a network drive and corrupt it. If the NAS had software to enable this that would be awesome but otherwise some solutions for backup software that would do this would be excellent. I suppose online would be a good option too so something like backblaze or carbonite might be good options but I have no idea how well any software for these services works or what software is good for these services. Backing up a laptop with a 256 or 500 gig drive on a fibre link so any option could work but it would need to work over a WiFi link. Other suggestions also happily heard.

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timmmay

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#2322823 22-Sep-2019 18:32

IMHO the key to backups is they're offsite, incremental, and being immutable is useful.

Short answer is to use the BackBlaze service. Longer answer is to read this thread.

epr

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#2322830 22-Sep-2019 18:41

Thanks I forgot to mention it is a Win 10 machine I will have a read of that thread and see if I can discern the best option for my situation.

timmmay

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#2322845 22-Sep-2019 19:00

BazkBlaze meets all your stated requirements. NAS isn't a backup, it's a copy IMHO. Even if you do incremental backups it doesn't help if your house burns down or someone steals it.

I use CloudBerry backup, syncing to AWS S3, into a version controlled bucket with a lifecycle policy that moves to different storage tiers and eventually deletes old versions. But BackBlaze is easier for most. Beware their 30 day version history.

OldGeek

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#2323138 23-Sep-2019 08:32

I have the same needs (Home Office backup) and already had a NAS. I use NAS backups as on-site and cloud backup as off-site backup. This gives me backup access without an internet connection and access to backup in the event the NAS is destroyed. I eventually settled on separate solutions for cloud storage and backup client.

For cloud storage Backblaze B2 was the best and most inexpensive cloud storage - $US0.005 per gig per month (yes that is half a US cent). For a backup client I chose ARQ (arqbackup.com) because it supports backup to B2 and NAS and has no ongoing licence fees.

The traditional Backblaze (and similar) products, where cloud storage is bundled with client software is way more expensive and ties the user to a specific cloud storage vendor. I would highly recommend you choose your backup software first, then choose from the cloud storage/NAS options they support as a separate exercise.

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timmmay

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#2323157 23-Sep-2019 08:53

BackBlare or similar is really quite cheap especially for higher data volumes, and has the advantage it does most things most people need automatically.

If anyone does want to do their own backups, AWS S3 Deep Archive tier is US$0.00099 per GB, about NZ$0.0013c per GB - one fifth the price of B2. Note though that B2 and other S3 tiers are online storage, deep archive is more akin to tape backup. It works great if you upload the files you want to archive, and you can use lifecycle policies have old data moved down to that tier, but if you use active backup software that ever tries to read the data back it could trigger retrieval pricing. For that reason it's more useful for syncing to than when using backup software.

Every six months I convert my raw images to medium jpeg, video to 720p compressed, and pull together all new and changed files. I zip them into large files, one per data type, and upload them to S3 Deep Archive. If I lose my onsite disks, my nearsite disks which has two copies of my data in two formats, and my other offsite disk which also has two copies in two formats, I can pull all documents and acceptable quality versions of all my family photo and video down. The cost for me for this is negligible, from memory about $1 per month.

I liked Arq, but found a couple of bugs and wasn't sure I wanted my data in a format that only a single program uses when it's a single developer piece of software. There's meant to be an open source decoder to mitigate that risk. I don't trust CloudBerry fully either, I do use their incremental encrypted backups but I also keep a plain copy. I trust AWS S3 more, which is why I upload zipped files, to a bucket that's encrypted, version controled, and the user doing the upload has very limited permissions.

Yoban

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#2323171 23-Sep-2019 09:09

timmmay:

...

I use CloudBerry backup, syncing to AWS S3, into a version controlled bucket with a lifecycle policy that moves to different storage tiers and eventually deletes old versions. But BackBlaze is easier for most. Beware their 30 day version history.

@timmmay, Been following you backup setup posts of which have been very knowledgeable. I am heading down this path and would be interested in understanding your retention policy setup in AWS. I was looking to use glacier to store of sit backups. Plan was to back up to my NAS and then backup/clone the back up to AWS glacier which would go via S3 using Duplicati or RClone.

trying to figure out how to keep glacier manageable, that is not having more than 6 months of full back ups as an example.

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timmmay

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#2323207 23-Sep-2019 10:20

Yoban:

@timmmay, Been following you backup setup posts of which have been very knowledgeable. I am heading down this path and would be interested in understanding your retention policy setup in AWS. I was looking to use glacier to store of sit backups. Plan was to back up to my NAS and then backup/clone the back up to AWS glacier which would go via S3 using Duplicati or RClone.

trying to figure out how to keep glacier manageable, that is not having more than 6 months of full back ups as an example.

Heads up - don't use Glacier service directly, it's useful in some cases but doesn't have the deep archive class. Use S3 with the various storage classes. It's more flexible and much easier to use.

My retention policy is fairly simple - delete old versions after 366 days. I never delete the current version.

I also have some lifecycle rules in place to tier things. Here's what I use for my bucket which is purely used for long term archive.

Here's a more sensible lifecycle policy if the bucket is for general purpose use by a piece of backup software. It doesn't use deep archive, it uses infrequent access. I don't tend to bother with this, if I want something to be IA class I set it on upload.

I have Restic backup four repositories to one bucket. For that I want the data folder in IA class, but I want the indexes and such in S3 standard. Because Restic can delete data blocks at any time I don't want it in Glacier class. Note the prefer - prefix is similar to a path on a file system.

1101

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#2323331 23-Sep-2019 12:33

NAS drives MUST MUST MUST also be backed up
backup the NAS to USB drives & have those offsite . Sort of makes the NAS just an un-needed step for a good backup plan then.

NAS's can & do fail . Data on NAS's can corrupt or become unreadable .
A power spike /malware etc etc can also take out the NAS .

Also , think about ease of recovery . If you have alot of data to be recovered, how quickly can you recover if using cloud storage .
Can your cloud backup be used for a full image recovery ?
Also, do some test recoveries. Never just assume they will work.

Sometimes its just easiest to backup(image) to USB drives . Win7/10 backup/image works really well.

Yoban

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#2323706 24-Sep-2019 09:27

Thanks @timmmay, very insightful. Now time to go experiment with using NAS on onsite copy and AWS as offsite. Will most likely backup to NAS and then backup/sync the backups to AWS. Your idea of also storing the "original" data in ZIP files is a good idea especially if recovery is needed and I am reliant on a backup application to restore as you pointed out.