NASn00b
Cadet
- Joined
- Apr 3, 2012
- Messages
- 9
Being quite new to FreeNAS, I have been looking for a good way to do an off-site backup. I don't have access to a remote FreeNAS box so I started looking at what was available as a web service. I had several suggestions from friends along the lines of: Crashplan and Dropbox etc. but nothing featured rsync or FreeBSD, I didn't fancy porting anything and they all looked potentially expensive.
After some research I found a web service called s3rsync (http://www.s3rsync.com/index.html#services) which enables you to use rsync to interface into Amazon (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3). I am experimenting at the moment and I would be interested in any comments or experiences from other FreeNAS'ers.
My estimates were; that to back up 100 GB would cost about $12 per month. At the moment I have 25 GB backed up and my monthly charges are < $3 (very difficult to estimate accurately due to complexity of AWS charging model).
The steps are: create an account on AWS (US Region) and some 'buckets' on S3 (no start up costs). Register / subscribe to s3rsync (small up-front charge). Install ssh private key file on FreeNAS. Write some scripts for your rsync backups using the 'model' command line supplied by s3rsync. Schedule cron jobs on the FreeNAS box using the GUI.
s3rsync provide the ssh key and the command format for 'pushing' data to your S3 'buckets', fundamentally the script is just standard rsync and you can use all the usual options. The s3rsync service translates your commands into the relevant S3 commands and stores your files as a 'multi-tar' file set on AWS. To restore you can use rsync to effectively reverse the process or you could ftp the .tar files to any ftp client. As a semi-unix-literate user it took a while to get the hang of the service but using the command line and some basic rsync logging options soon ironed out the wrinkles.
There are a few quirks, for example the bucket size is limited to 10 GB so you have to parcel up your backups accordingly, also you can only run one rsync session at a time, so you have to spread out the cron jobs so as not to overlap.
It seems to be quite successful so far, any comments or questions welcome.
After some research I found a web service called s3rsync (http://www.s3rsync.com/index.html#services) which enables you to use rsync to interface into Amazon (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3). I am experimenting at the moment and I would be interested in any comments or experiences from other FreeNAS'ers.
My estimates were; that to back up 100 GB would cost about $12 per month. At the moment I have 25 GB backed up and my monthly charges are < $3 (very difficult to estimate accurately due to complexity of AWS charging model).
The steps are: create an account on AWS (US Region) and some 'buckets' on S3 (no start up costs). Register / subscribe to s3rsync (small up-front charge). Install ssh private key file on FreeNAS. Write some scripts for your rsync backups using the 'model' command line supplied by s3rsync. Schedule cron jobs on the FreeNAS box using the GUI.
s3rsync provide the ssh key and the command format for 'pushing' data to your S3 'buckets', fundamentally the script is just standard rsync and you can use all the usual options. The s3rsync service translates your commands into the relevant S3 commands and stores your files as a 'multi-tar' file set on AWS. To restore you can use rsync to effectively reverse the process or you could ftp the .tar files to any ftp client. As a semi-unix-literate user it took a while to get the hang of the service but using the command line and some basic rsync logging options soon ironed out the wrinkles.
There are a few quirks, for example the bucket size is limited to 10 GB so you have to parcel up your backups accordingly, also you can only run one rsync session at a time, so you have to spread out the cron jobs so as not to overlap.
It seems to be quite successful so far, any comments or questions welcome.
