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Thread: NAS with automatic cloud backup

  1. #1
    only the finest beef
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    NAS with automatic cloud backup

    My cheap NAS device has failed me, and having decided to go for the redundancy option of RAID when I bought it I had to have a power supply problem (which has destroyed both hard-drives in the array).

    Bearing in mind I'm going to be skint after paying the experts to extract my data for me (~£500 ) I want to replace it with a device that will backup to the cloud automatically and be reasonably good value for money.

    My broadband speed is:



    So, having worked out that it's going to take a month to upload all our data (~130GB) I don't want to have to leave my laptop on waiting for it to finish an upload, additionally I'll want incremental backups so that only the changes are uploaded.

    Does anybody have any recommendations? Is having RAID redundancy a good thing (ie was I unlucky) or should I just go for a single drive device?

    I was thinking about an Iomega Storcenter, due to their teaming up with Mozy. The problem is, I can't work out whether this would be automatic or not. It looks like I'd need a server licence which would set me back about £40/month.

    The data is things like our music collection and all our photos, we obviously don't want to lose them (hence spending a small fortune on recovering them!)

    Any assistance much appreciated!

  2. #2
    Splash
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    Re: NAS with automatic cloud backup

    Is it feasible to buy 2 identical devices, then set one up at a seperate location (friends/folks/somewhere) and just run rsync between them at your place, then take them to the backup location? That'll save you the hideous initial seeding period and also the ongoing monthly charges for "cloud" backup.

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    Angus (03-06-2011)

  4. #3
    only the finest beef
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    Re: NAS with automatic cloud backup

    Thanks Splash - sounds like a good idea. How does Rsync work? Would I be able to automate it? (I'm quite forgetful!)

    Presumably I could also reciprocate the agreement and back up data for the folks that I leave the other device with by using different folders for each?

    Should I go for two RAID devices?

  5. #4
    Splash
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    Re: NAS with automatic cloud backup

    Essentially with rsync you run the daemon on both devices, one as a target, one as host. I don't really know what your immediate budget is, but with the HP Microservers £100 cashback offer being extended I'd suggest that you at least take a look at them... They're probably overkill for what you need, but 4 bays gives you a lot of potential storage and with software RAID you can easily protect against the failure of a single disk.

    As rsync runs as a daemon you'd generally call it with cron for scheduling purposes, so you could happily have it kick off at a specified time/day. I used to use this exact process for replicating data between 2 NAS devices across a WAN.

    In terms of the folks hosting your backup device it would seem a nice way to return the favour of them hosting your backups, but bear in mind that your broadband connection isn't the fastest and as such may limit you in that respect.


    EDIT - the obvious benefit of this kind of arrangement is that if your device fails and you need to recover 130Gb (or however much you have at the time) of data you can likely drive round and pick up the device rather than download all that data on a relatively slim pipe.

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    Angus (03-06-2011)

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    Jay
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    Re: NAS with automatic cloud backup

    I know that QNAP have it



    This is a rather expensive one though
    □ΞVΞ□

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    Re: NAS with automatic cloud backup

    Overkill - maybe, but at those prices they look pretty good. Having never used anything like this before, I'm assuming that I'll need an OS. Could I use/would you recommend Linux as a cheaper option than buying a Microsoft server edition of Windows? I've not used Linux before if this affects the advice!

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    Re: NAS with automatic cloud backup

    Quote Originally Posted by Jay View Post
    I know that QNAP have it



    This is a rather expensive one though
    Looks promising, nevertheless...

  11. #8
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    Re: NAS with automatic cloud backup

    If going with a Microserver you could pretty easily install Ubuntu to a small disk on each, Even if you've never used it before it's pretty eay to get to grips with, and there's loads of us around here that will be happy to help. I personally use OpenFiler as I use mine for iSCSI and NFS storage, you'd be using yours for SMB by the sounds, so a much more basic setup would be fine.

    The QNAP gear that Jay mentioned is pretty sweet, but again costs a pretty penny, and you're still looking at Amazon S3 fees (for the cloud storage, upload and download) and a longer recovery window if needs be.

    At the end of the day it really comes down to your expectations, requirements and also how much of your own time you're prepared to put into setting it up. Once whichever solution you go with is setup it should run pretty much on it's own (make sure you check that the backups *are* working, mind!) unless you start to run shy of space, at which point it's a couple of array rebuilds with larger disks, expanding the filesystem to fill the array and carry on as normal.

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    Re: NAS with automatic cloud backup

    Quote Originally Posted by Jay View Post
    I know that QNAP have it

    This is a rather expensive one though
    You can install CrashPlan QPKG Jay and for around £35 you get unlimited online storage

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    Re: NAS with automatic cloud backup

    You're not the first and won't be the last to fall victim to the assumption that RAID=backup. Probably not the cheapest way to have learned it but you learn from experience!

    Bear in mind that on that connection it will take you about as long to download it as it would to upload it. Some companies like Backblaze can post a HDD out to you to restore everything but they don't support network devices and will exclude certain file types, some others might.

    I agree the option of having one server yourself and keeping one elsewhere would be a good option. I also agree with using Linux on a HP Microserver - I run Debian on one and it essentially maxes out GigE with SMB.

    In most cases, I really don't see the point in using RAID for home use - it provides redundancy i.e. allows the array to stay online if a drive fails but as you discovered, there are other things besides drives that can fail! Unless you must make every effort to keep the NAS online 24/7 I wouldn't bother wasting your money on the extra disks needed for it, just use JBOD/single disks/single logical volume across the lot.

    Also, I think some consumer NAS devices let you back up over a network to another one.

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    Angus (05-06-2011)

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    Re: NAS with automatic cloud backup

    Quote Originally Posted by spoon_ View Post
    You can install CrashPlan QPKG Jay and for around £35 you get unlimited online storage
    Have you got a link for that OPKG ?

    I have been trying to install crashplan manually on my Qnap TS-110 (re-flashed to Debian) without any success. If there is a working OPKG available then I could unpack it an use that.

  16. #12
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    Re: NAS with automatic cloud backup

    Cheers guys for your words of wisdom so far.

    I think I've decided on going for the HP Microserver; I'll get an additional drive so that I can keep data and OS separate, but won't get enough to start making RAID arrays.

    I'll only get one device, and will backup to Amazon S3. I don't intend to bulk upload/download on a regular basis and may use their Import/Export service. This is the first time I've lost any data that means anything to me in the 15 years or so that I've been using computers, I figure that the cost of sending a drive to Amazon to get them to export my data is significantly less than the cost of reconstructing data from damaged drives.

    With regards to the OS, I've just found out that I can get a free copy of Windows server through the Dreamspark programme (I have an international student ID card) and would be tempted to use this, rather than Linux as I have no experience of Linux whatsoever. However, I accept that there's a possibility that a Linux distro might be a better solution. Especially as there appear to be more solutions for providing an iTunes server from the system.

    Essentially, I want the final system to:

    1) Provide network storage
    2) Serve my iTunes library over the network
    3) Automatically backup to Amazon S3 (through RSync?)

    I'd also like it to be relatively easy to backup!

    Any thoughts please?

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    Senior Member watercooled's Avatar
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    Re: NAS with automatic cloud backup

    Windows server isn't exactly a piece of cake to set up either if you've never used it before, and once you get over the instinctive fear of using CLI on Linux, I don't think you'll have any trouble setting up a server to do what you want. I'm no expert on S3 so I'll leave it to the experts to answer that bit.

  18. #14
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    Re: NAS with automatic cloud backup

    There are a whole load of services you can use to backup to S3, with varying prices. JungleDisk comes pretty highly recommended, but bear in mind that your initial seeding period means that the first month (or however long it takes you to upload all your data) will be pretty expensive. Also make sure you check that whichever one you opt for runs on Windows Server as that looks like your platform of choice - a few will only work on the Desktop OS flavours.

    Also bear in mind that there's nothing inherently wrong wih RAID - I'd say given how relatively cheap disk is these days it would be worth putting your data on a RAID1 (or possibly even 5 or 6) array, but purely in the interests of maintaining a local copy. That way if one disk fails you don't have to re-download all your data on what seems to be a pretty slow connection.

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    Senior Member watercooled's Avatar
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    Re: NAS with automatic cloud backup

    I'd rather keep an offline backup with the spare drives over using RAID1, you guard against more than just a single drive failure then. Even if you only run the local backup weekly, you'll have a copy of everything but the most recent stuff which will cut down massively on the time/cost of downloading the lot.

  20. #16
    Splash
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    Re: NAS with automatic cloud backup

    But why not have RAID1, offline backup and cloud backup? If the hardware supports the RAID (and the Microserver certainly does) it seems trivial to buy an extra disk and RAID, as well as maybe keeping an eSATA caddy to dump offline backups maybe once a week, and keeping the disk in a drawer at all other time.

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