Offsite Backup Options

Nov845 · June 16, 2020

Hello,

I'm going for flexibility, but also simplicity for an offsite backup. I'm just wanting to get some opinions and recommendations.

Should an offsite backup have data redundancy? It wouldn't be terribly difficult for me to swap out a failed drive if it had a RAID 0 array. I understand that re-backing everything up would take a day or two.

How far away should an offsite backup be located? My two preferred options are 3 miles or 102 miles away. I have a 3rd less preferable option that's 60 miles away. The site that's 102 miles away is a cabin that has an AT&T mobile hotspot, so I'm not sure if the connection speed is adequate enough for regular incremental backups, after the initial bulk backup is done. The sites that are 3 and 60 miles away have regular broadband internet.

I've been using Dropbox for the last couple years because I like the way its software integrates with File Explorer. I've been looking at Synology's products, but can't get a solid option from them. Does their cloud software integrate into File Explorer? Or does their backup software work like a file synchronization platform? I've been using Acronis for my personal rig backup solution, but I don't like how the backups are stored in a single file of their own proprietary format.

Pixel5 · June 16, 2020

generally you want your offsite backup to have at least one disk redundancy if the data is very important, imagine you main server blows up and just at that moment one of your drives fails in the offsite backup leaving you with nothing at all.

The location or distance is not that important overall but going 102 miles away has the huge advantage that the distance is long enough that its going to be in a different sector of the power grid making it very unlikely for both sites to experience a power outage at the same time.

You have to think about how important your data is and how much data you are going to backup there, the cabin could be fine but a mobile connection is not really the best idea if you have huge files.

If you go for the 3 mile option consider getting a UPS for it.

Regarding options im using a Synology NAS here with one disk redundancy, you can install their software on a PC and basically use a folder like you normally would just that any file in it will be send to the server if you want to.

If you get two synologys you can even have the mirror each other if you want to.

I guess the most important question is what do you want to have backed up and how much data do you expect?