Off-site Backup?

[JCH]

Hello,

 

So I'm hosting some important projects on a dedicated server with a 256GB SSD, however I feel like I should have an off-site backup server to remotely backup all of my files every 24 hours or so. I've built myself another server, however I'm unsure how to setup this remote backup. 

[Enderman]

first of all, can your internet speed handle uploading hundreds of GBs of data once a day without making your internet unusable?

[networkArchitect]

First off, what OSes are your servers running? Answers will vary wildly for different OSes. Also, to avoid the problem @enderman stated, you can run automated backups at ridiculously late hours of the night (personally my local and remote storage servers sync between 3AM and 6AM). 

 

Secondly, how fast is your internet connection, specifically the upload rate on the location of your dedicated server, and the download rate of the location where the backup server will be located? The slower of the two speeds will be how fast you will be able to transfer data. 

 

Thirdly, how much will the data be changing inbetween backups? 

2 hours ago, Enderman said:

first of all, can your internet speed handle uploading hundreds of GBs of data once a day without making your internet unusable?

If @JCH uses incremental backups (which only upload the changes to files since the last backup), and their internet connection is relatively modern (>=30mb/s symmetrical), and they set the transfer to only occur at night, this shouldn't be nearly as big of an issue is you make it out to be. 

[monkstick]

Get something like Crashplan. Its only a couple $ a month (6, I think?) for unlimited storage, and it will backup by default every 15 minutes (Configurable). It will only backup changed files ofcourse.

 

You don't have to pay $, as you could use the second server as the destination for free.

[JCH]

18 hours ago, Enderman said:

first of all, can your internet speed handle uploading hundreds of GBs of data once a day without making your internet unusable?

 

15 hours ago, networkArchitect said:

First off, what OSes are your servers running? Answers will vary wildly for different OSes. Also, to avoid the problem @enderman stated, you can run automated backups at ridiculously late hours of the night (personally my local and remote storage servers sync between 3AM and 6AM). 

 

Secondly, how fast is your internet connection, specifically the upload rate on the location of your dedicated server, and the download rate of the location where the backup server will be located? The slower of the two speeds will be how fast you will be able to transfer data. 

 

Thirdly, how much will the data be changing inbetween backups? 

If @JCH uses incremental backups (which only upload the changes to files since the last backup), and their internet connection is relatively modern (>=30mb/s symmetrical), and they set the transfer to only occur at night, this shouldn't be nearly as big of an issue is you make it out to be. 

I have housed my servers in a datacenter with at least 1gbps down and 500mbps up.

 

My main server with all of my projects is running CentOS 7 x64, however my backup server can run any OS that I want.

 

I have around 120GB in terms of files.

[networkArchitect]

42 minutes ago, JCH said:

My main server with all of my projects is running CentOS 7 x64, however my backup server can run any OS that I want.

If you're good with writing your own scripts, I'd recommend taking a look at rsync (man page here); it's a network file transfer command that works great for backups. It supports things like compressing files to minimize the amount you need to transfer, then decompressing them on receive, an incremental option that only copies over files that have changed, and the ability to set it up with SSH keys so you don't have to enter in a password manually. 

 

Personally I have a script that uses rsync to copy between my local and remote servers, which is run by cron every night. 

[Dark]

Install crashplan on both.

 

Setup your offsite server as a backup destination.

 

Otherwise, rsync is great if you have a static ip or dynDNS

 

I backup everything at home to the server AND to an offsite system via crashplan.  Considering I already have a local backup, the offiste server is minimal with a single large drive.