What is the most cost effective way to do backups?
I'm interesting in backing up some large VM images, say about 500 GB.
I want to optimize for lowest cost.
I would prefer to use a tool like rsync (and not an inflexible closed source GUI). So, things like Box don't appeal to me.
I'm doing this in case of catastrophic failure to my HD. It is a risk, of course, but I would prefer to pay less for a service that might "only be 90%" as reliable. I don't need 5 9s.
I see a variety of services, the best of which seem to be rsync.net which is priced at minimum of 700 GB for 1.5 cents a GB, so about $15/mo (https://www.rsync.net/pricing.html)
I could run my own VM on Vultr and can't do better than that AFAICT.
I see services like pCloud which have a *lifetime* cost of $199 for 500B (https://www.pcloud.com/cloud-storage-pricing-plans.html?peri...). That seems interesting, and I expect in five years they will say "Sorry, we are out of business!" I'm ok with that risk and will likely plan for that.
But, are there other options to consider? Is there a sweet spot for storage if I almost never need to put more files, can tolerate slow retrieval, and am OK with a discount because the company will probably go out of business?
I could just buy a used desktop off Craigslist with a 1TB drive for $200 and pay for the power myself. That's another option, but I wonder if there is some reason I can find a cheaper option.
What threats are you trying to mitigate against? Only primary hard drive failures? Ransomware? User/application error? Fire/Flood/Earthquake?
If you only want 90% and don't care about local concentration of risk, it's going to be really hard to beat a $50 used computer with a SATA hard drive turned into a Linux box in your basement.
I think a good way to go would be to get an used desktop and backup your VMs to it using rsync. "Pure sync is not backup", yes, that's right. So for a real backup you can use a service like Wasabi, for example, which will cost you around $5/TB per month with no extras fees for data transfers.
In case you lose any VMs, you could immediately access a local copy at your used desktop. In case your whole place/office is compromised, you could access Wasabi from a different location and download a copy of your VM.
Disclaimer: I'm a Wasabi MSP.
Restic (only backing up important data) to Backblaze B2 has been the sweet spot for my use cases. If the full VM goes down, I'll spin up a new one and restore my data.
>I would prefer to use a tool like rsync (and not an inflexible closed source GUI). So, things like Box don't appeal to me.
The good news is that there is a tool for this: rclone
https://rclone.org/docs/
It's basically rsync for cloud services and even supports your example of the Box cloud service.
You can do a lot of neat things with rclone like transparent encryption and even turning a cloud storage into a mounted local storage folder.
The other option would just be something simple like a RasPi or similar miniPC with a pair of HDDs mirrored, either automatically or manually by just backing up to both, or having the pc copy one to the other, with some retention rules etc.
Honestly for important data I would do both a cloud backup and local, unless you have too much data where cloud would be too expensive. In that case just keep the most important stuff in the cloud and keep that and the less important stuff local.
Anecdata, but I've been very happy with pCloud. Notably it regularly goes on sale. I think I got my 2tb lifetime plan for ~$300, and it's been perfectly sufficient. I've had it for around 4 years so far, so it's more than paid for itself versus the dropbox subscriptions that it replaced.
Since you mention buying a desktop as a local solution. You can instead get a single drive NAS for less then $200, or better yet a 2 drive one that you can put into a RAID config.
I use backblaze.com - less than $100/year for unlimited backup on my main machine. Their business backup is $5/TB/Month, significantly less than S3.
Cloud storage is a massive ripoff. Just go buy a 2TB drive at Best Buy for $120 and stick it in an external usb-c enclosure from amazon for $15.
Personally I just push to an offsite restic backup on a cheap Hetzner storage box. It's not super fast and only hosted in EU AFAICT but it fits the bill for being cheap and reliable enough. It's just there for me to retrieve sentimental-value things like photos in the off chance all my other backup methods have failed.
Initial setup is a bit weird with their SSH key setup IIRC but manageable.
https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box
Backblaze is really nice, I used it for large backups (cold backups)
I paid $89 for 15 months of Microsoft Office 365. It gives you 1TB per user for up to 5 users.
I use onedrive app on Iphone to backup images.
Next step is to sync my NAS but I have not gotten around to that yet.
Maybe not what you are looking for, but I do it the manual way. Low-end, but reliable once in a while: USB3.2 external SSD
(example 60usd on NewEgg for SanDisk 1TB)
Why not get a RAID array and store them in your basement?
The cheapest and simplest strategy is to buy several external drives and leave them at work / someone else's house.
Definitely take a look at tools like borg and restic, they'll help make the backups easier to do and have advantages in encryption and deduplication. Borgmatic is a nicely configurable system on top of borg for handling retiring of old backups and file paths and such.
If you're not worried about physical/location risk, just buy an external HDD or a NAS.
What you want is an external SATA RAID array hot swap cage. Connect two drives and in your OS set up a mirrored array. If one drive fails the other keeps working (don't buy the same model/batch drive). Cheaper over time than monthly payment.
What is your process for restoration testing? If you test restoring from backups frequently you can afford less durable backup media. If you test restoring only after a few years when shit has hit the fan you will want to pay for higher durability.
You may already have some free storage from a service like Google or Apple (iCloud). You could use something like that and rsync. Otherwise, a cheap desktop +/ NAS in basement with rsync might be the cheapest option.
If you don't need to backup regularly, use offline storage and take multiple copies. That's what I do for everything I run at home. But I don't need daily backup. I backup every quarter.
How often do you plan to do backups? Continuously or periodically?
Set up a physical server on hetzner with a bunch of large disks. Then use zfs send. Job done :)
IceDrive is a pCloud alternative you might want to look into. I personally use pCloud though.
Restic is the tool and Glacier is the service if you want it cheap.
kopia.io to onedrive family plan. Nothing beats the price and lack of restrictions, plus it's encrypted, compressed and deduped before being sent off.
restic to a Glacier-like storage or dedicated storage box at the likes of Blackbase or Hetzner.
That would be around $5/TB/month, AFAIR.
rclone or restic with Wasabi is my goto backup solution. Restic for snapshots, rclone for random data dirs.