
Show HN: Relica – Cross-platform local, remote, and multi-cloud file backups - mholt
https://relicabackup.com/
======
mholt
Hey HN! I started working on this after my old cloud backup service
(CrashPlan) announced they were discontinuing their Home product. My cofounder
Cory and I built this to meet our own needs, and also for our families to use,
most of whom are non-technical. We're working really hard to make Relica the
best backup solution for a broad range of consumers, from everyday users to
more technical professionals with specific needs. Besides ourselves, my mother
and my brother are among Relica's first users.

We're really excited to share the beginning of our product! I'm personally a
bit terrified, too. :) We have a lot of great features planned, besides the
ones we've already implemented. (Coming soon: back up to your own cloud
destinations such as your own S3 account or SFTP destinations.)

Feel free to sign up, give it a spin, share your referral link with others to
get discounts, and let us know what you think!

~~~
elefantastisch
Can I sign up somewhere to get notified when "back up to your own cloud
destinations" is complete? This is all I want in a backup service. Install on
all my devices (this must include mobile devices too), send everything I care
about to as many destinations as I provide, all of which I manage myself.

As great as cloud backup solutions are, the weak point is always getting
things out. If I can just have it in my own S3 bucket, I can do absolutely
anything I like with my files. Count me as very interested if this is where
you're going.

Also, trust and security are going to be huge. How do I know you're not going
to leak and / or abuse the depth of access you get by owning my backups?

~~~
yroc92
Great questions!

> Can I sign up somewhere to get notified when "back up to your own cloud
> destinations" is complete?

If you edit your backup, you can create a custom hook
([https://relicabackup.com/docs/backup-
hooks](https://relicabackup.com/docs/backup-hooks)). We plan to implement
email notifications when such events occur as well.

> As great as cloud backup solutions are, the weak point is always getting
> things out.

We're implementing "Bring your own cloud" now, so you can provide your own
S3-compatible, SFTP, Azure, or Google storage (more to come). This feature is
almost done.

> Also, trust and security are going to be huge.

Backups are encrypted on the client, and the key is kept on your local device
(don't lose it!). We can't access your data, and even your file selection is
encrypted.

~~~
danenania
This looks like a great service—nice work!

Question: if the encryption key is kept on the device, how can I access data
from another device?

~~~
mholt
The actual key is stored at the destination inside the repository, encrypted
by a password that you have to enter (doesn't matter the device). So don't
lose the password. Technically there are a few keys in play:
[https://restic.readthedocs.io/en/stable/100_references.html#...](https://restic.readthedocs.io/en/stable/100_references.html#keys-
encryption-and-mac)

Anyway, if you know your encryption password, you can perform a restore from
any device with access to the destination.

~~~
danenania
Cool, that makes more sense.

------
Zaheer
Notable competitor: Arq
([https://www.arqbackup.com/](https://www.arqbackup.com/)). Part of the reason
I prefer Arq is that there's no monthly fees on the tool itself. I own my
backup data wherever I choose to send it to (S3, Google Cloud, etc).

~~~
cpach
As an Arq user I don’t trust it anymore after it suddenly ceased to show my
old backups in the GUI.

~~~
sreitshamer
I'd love to know more about this too (I'm the lead developer on Arq). Please
email support@arqbackup.com with details if you don't want to post here. Thank
you!

~~~
cpach
I have already mailed you. There was no fix unfortunately.

~~~
sreitshamer
OK. I found your email from Sep 2017, using Arq 4 and Amazon Cloud Drive.
There was a problem with Arq deleting more old backup records than you
expected, but without more information about what had happened in the previous
year I couldn't figure out why it wasn't doing what you expected.

------
stephenr
The sales page claims that data can be restored using
[https://github.com/restic/restic](https://github.com/restic/restic).

It seems like a pretty safe bet then, that this is a web interface on top of
restic.

~~~
mholt
Yes, we've been making contributions to restic for some time because we have
been very happy with restic's stability, capabilities, and cross-platform
support. In fact, the initial plan was to "just" create a web UI for restic,
but then we decided to bring it full circle and make it a consumer product so
that our families and friends could migrate off their backup service which was
being discontinued.

------
Ixiaus
I'm really interested in this. I liked and used CrashPlan for some time but
have had a sub-par backup setup since they shuttered their home-user business.

~~~
mholt
Great - we look forward to serving you! Feel free to get in touch if you have
any feedback.

------
jonotime
Very interesting project which I will be following. Linux user here who had to
roll my own after CrashPlan. I went with Duplicati and Backblaze because the
combo was cheap and had a web/linux client. Could I recommend allowing
Backblaze for storage since its cheaper then S3? It looks like restic already
supports B2.

~~~
mholt
Yes, coming soon! Relica already supports this capability (it is undocumented)
-- we are just finishing it up in the UI. It's our #1 request so far.

And although we may not start out with so many, Relica will be able to support
about a dozen different backend storage types before the end.

------
locacorten
Nice job.

I'm a little skeptical though -- I think the devil is in the details. It's a
lot of work to make a highly reliable backup program. As a Windows user,
here's a list of questions I'd ask:

1\. Does Relica work with OneDrive on-demand files? [1]

2\. Does Relica work with WSL files? [2]

Supporting all these corner cases on Windows, Mac, and Linux will be a TON of
work.

[1]: [https://support.office.com/en-us/article/learn-about-
onedriv...](https://support.office.com/en-us/article/learn-about-onedrive-
files-on-demand-0e6860d3-d9f3-4971-b321-7092438fb38e)

[2]: [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2016/06/15/wsl-file-
sys...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/wsl/2016/06/15/wsl-file-system-
support/)

~~~
sreitshamer
What's your expectation with OneDrive on-demand files?

~~~
locacorten
For any files, my expectation of a backup program is that Restore(Backup(FS))
== FS, where FS is the state of my file system.

------
thebiglebrewski
Amazing that you're doing this! I've been looking for something new for a
while.

How well does this work for developers? I had to stop using Dropbox because
NPM/Yarn seems to do too many symlinks for Dropbox to understand and it never
stopped syncing.

I then tried to switch to Google Drive backup but THEIR BACKUP + SYNC APP
KILLS MY MACHINE because it's a huge memory hog. I have to kill it/restart
ever since going there so now I'm looking to get off of this Google Monster.

I'd be excited to try your service but would love an answer to the above!
Also, how does restore work? Your FAQ/docs are pretty light on screenshots of
the actual software.

Good luck!

~~~
mholt
Thanks for the comments! As you can see why, we don't recommend using file
sync software for backups. Relica can handle symlinks just fine: it preserves
them, not follows them.

Restore works well also, it just runs in the background. Pretty simple right
now, but we're actively participating in contributing to restic to make
restores more interactive in the sense of progress reporting. We are not
focusing on screenshots right now so we can revamp the UI, and we have some
good ideas for restores, so you'll see it changing here in the next few
months.

Anyway, we'd love for you to give it a try! Feel free to email us with any
other feedback.

~~~
thebiglebrewski
Thanks for your reply!

Let's say my entire computer is lost or stolen. What's the best way to
restore? Can I restore my entire disk image? Or does Relica just backup
individual files, meaning I'd have to repopuplate my environment, then use
Relica to bring back files? Does Relica use one directory like Dropbox by
default or does it backup my whole machine?

~~~
mholt
Good questions. I should add some of these to our FAQ.

Relica does file backup, not disk imaging -- for various reasons. So you'll
install Relica and restore the files either on your new computer, or just log
into the website (without needing to install Relica) and download a restore
file --- that web restore feature is coming soon; we just got it working in
dev last week. :)

You can back up all the files your user has access to with Relica. You can
actually run it as root (on Linux) but we need to write a how-to for that,
since it unfortunately requires disabling automatic upgrades for now. We'll
work on making it more flexible for these use cases once we've got the basics
more covered.

------
mmmeff
I don't understand what the base price is supposed to cover... Why would I pay
you $60/year to back up my files to thumb drives and friends' computers?

~~~
cpach
_”Why would I pay you $60 /year to back up my files to thumb drives and
friends' computers?”_

Isn’t that kinda obvious? What you pay for is the ability for the developers
to continue refining the application and keep adding useful features. Sounds
reasonable to me at least.

~~~
WorldMaker
But it also leaves you susceptible to potential pivots in the business plan if
the developers decide that base fee isn't enough or isn't generating enough
income. The benefit to an ownership model in this case, particularly with
"bring your own cloud" is that at least you have some immunity if the
developers _stop_ refining the application.

This is more than just a hypothetical. One of the mentioned reasons for this
application was the shutdown of CrashPlan for home users. Using a similar
monthly fee plan doesn't show any more resilience than the service they are
trying to replace. What's the likelihood that the same market realities that
pushed CrashPlan to shut down such services don't also impact them?

More personally anecdotally, I bought a "bring your own cloud" multi-cloud
backup tool many years ago. I still use it, even through several terrible
pivots, because the core software has been stable/consistent/well-enough
maintained at the time. They were bought by a cloud provider and dropped
"bring your own cloud" and "multi-cloud" from their main focused products.
They spun back out and are trying to be business-focused SaaS-only similar to
CrashPlan's recent pivot. Neither of those pivots have been to my advantage,
but again, for now, the original desktop application I bought all those years
ago still works great. Had I opted for one of the more monthly paid SaaS
products in either of those pivots, I would have been much worse off with each
pivot.

Unfortunately, there's also no way that I can recommend people buy a product
like mine because they no longer sell it in that manner (and haven't in
years), and it's incredibly tough to avoid the SaaS business model in the
backup space, but backup is one of the areas where such business models and
safety from pivots is extremely important and the SaaS model seems almost to
guarantee that pivots will happen.

~~~
mholt
We hear ya. We were bit the very example you mentioned, so to prevent that
with our service:

1) We are currently adding a "bring your own cloud" feature to Relica -- in
fact, it's already done, just undocumented while we finish up the UI for it.

2) Relica uses restic for the actual archival operations, so your restores can
be performed with an independent, reliable, well-maintained, MIT-licensed open
source tool.

------
techntoke
rclone does this for free already, is lighter and works with more cloud
providers.

~~~
mholt
Sorry, but rclone does not do what Relica does. :) And soon Relica will do at
least some of what rclone does, and to nearly as many cloud providers.

~~~
codegladiator
You should just have mentioned that this tool is built on top of rclone. It's
not a bad thing to give credit.

~~~
francislavoie
It's built on top of restic, not rclone.

~~~
yroc92
rclone and Restic are both used in Relica. They're both amazing projects and
we've been working with their communities to improve them!

------
deathero
hey matt, really love caddy server and this new service you created but one
question, since you are using an open source backup tool which is restic,
would you be willing to open source the web ui for the restic community? so
others can self host or even be able to use restic alot easier? i love using
restic but i think having an open source web ui would be nice to have.

~~~
mholt
Hey, glad you like Caddy.

I know of a couple efforts, either talked about or under way, to make an open
source web UI for restic. One is a PR to add a sort of API to restic:
[https://github.com/restic/restic/pull/1963](https://github.com/restic/restic/pull/1963)
\-- and another is here: [https://gitlab.simbookee.com/andi/restic-
gui.git](https://gitlab.simbookee.com/andi/restic-gui.git)

------
Heliosmaster
Great job! Any plans on doing a Docker version? What about integration with
some brand of NAS (e.g. Synology?)

~~~
mholt
No plans for containers at this time, sorry -- would you mind elaborating what
you have in mind or how that would work?

As for NAS integration, that'd be really cool -- I don't really know what is
involved to make that happen but it's something we're going to look into!

~~~
bradknowles
Well, docker containers is how you would get on Synology. ;)

------
newtisinal
May I ask who is it that has made this? Looking through the website and
twitter but unable to find any humans attached to the project. I do appreciate
how it says a human will read a response to any of their automated emails.

~~~
yroc92
Hi, I'm Cory. I worked with Matt (who introduced himself above) to make
Relica. I can confirm that two humans are attached to this project.

