John and Dan suggested Amazon S3 and rsync.net: I wanted to clarify my requirements.
Those, like ad-infinitum cloud services, provide raw storage. While you can roll your own software to do backups to raw storage, they are not "backup systems" that provide the following capabilities: * Continuous streaming of file updates every time you change any file on any backed-up filesystem * Versioning of every update to every updated file for the past decade+ * Indexing of all versions of all files, in an easy-to-recover way * Full sha-256 checksum registry of all stored files * Periodic integrity verification against the stored checksums * Periodic comparison of running filesystems against backup config, with alerting for files that aren't recently backed up * Data deduplication and storage management tools so I can recover space for files no longer wanted * Tight SSL and encryption security with MFA and assurance that I won't get myself locked out The "rsync and hope for the best" approach can and will fail when you forget to update the config to include recently-added volumes, or when you belatedly discover that the backup quit working a few months ago and you no longer have your London vacation photos anywhere, or you need to go back 3 revisions to get a piece of source code that you've made two or three botched edits to and can't remember the last working version. CrashPlan solves all the above problems except for storage-management and reliable integrity verification. My "roll my own" scripts--so far--aren't anywhere near all that I want, and I don't pay myself well enough to spend all the time needed to improve them. -rich _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
