Offsite backup or dual home servers

[MrWittel]

So here is my question. I would like to back up my data-off site. Want to set and forget it. The two options I see are:

 

#1 – Setup two FTP servers one at my house an another at my parents house. Each server about $400 for 8Tb so lets say $800 + $10 per month to run them if they draw 70ish watts each. Seams like a lot of money but that’s a lot of space and I control my data.

 

#2 – Use AWS, Google Drive, Backblaze. I don’t need to access this data regularly just if my house burns down or something crazy like that.

 

Requirements:
3 Desktops
5 Laptops
7 users

4Tb Total Est

 

It would be nice to back up the 7 phones as well but that’s not a huge deal.

 

What do you guys do or recommend?
 

[Windows7ge]

I can't determine what your exact personal preference would be considering objectively the integrity of your data would be "safer" in a cloud but simply, personally, for me, I would follow the 3-2-1 rule:

Quote

The 3-2-1 Backup Rule. The 3-2-1 backup rule is an easy-to-remember acronym for a common approach to keeping your data safe in almost any failure scenario. The rule is: keep at least three (3) copies of your data, and store two (2) backup copies on different storage media, with one (1) of them located offsite.

On the Linux side of things you can easily setup a replication task or RSYNC to copy all your data to a second storage medium on the network locally then use RSYNC over SSH to copy the data again to your remote server at your parents house.

 

That's what I'm doing. It works for me. Your mileage will vary.

[Euchre]

When I've heard the 3-2-1 standard, the 2 was not 2 copies, but 2 formats, and one of them usually meant to be very durable, like DVDs or conventional hard drives. The simpler and more inert, the better, hence why a DVD backup is still kind for ultra durable backups. If the content is meant to be permanent copy, it should be on archival quality media. If it is content that will be completely superseded on the next backup, you don't need that more expensive quality of media. This also can mean your offsite can be offline - like a safety deposit box in a bank vault. A hard drive or DVD stored in such a place is unlikely to be threatened by anything other than a seriously catastrophic incident. Geography matters too - your offsite should be far enough away to not be impacted by the same events as your original copies. Consider the wildfires in California; if your neighbor or even your local bank branch is your offsite, and they both burn, better hope their fire protection where it is stored is better than your own. In Florida I used to point out that hurricanes could wipe out things across half the state, so sending your backup to your relatives in the next town was no guarantee of safety.

[snodemon540]

UrBackup has worked well for me in the past. It has quite a few useful features. I have used it for personal use as well as in a business environment. https://www.urbackup.org/ 

[ITGuy1024]

I've used Crashplan for a little bit to send files from my PC to a computer at another location. It was free, worked alright. It was free.

My advice would have a VPN between the locations and use RSYNC to send the files from / to a share on each side. You could even use something like SyncToy that sends data Left to Right.

[MrWittel]

Awesome thank you so much for the help! Will be playing around with this for the next couple weeks and will report back