
Simple SFTP Hosting - rsync
https://rsync.net/products/sftp.html
======
rsync
After all of these years I am surprised at the number of new clients that are
written against an SFTP back-end.

For instance, foldersync[1], restic[2], rclone[3][4], and for ESX(i) (!!) I
have just learned of "VerticalBackup"[5].

It makes me happy that a stock, standard OpenSSH serving up what is basically
a UNIX home directory is still so powerful and useful.

Contrast this with the elegance and state of the art that is ZFS and how
immutable snapshots simultaneously solve both retention schedules _and_
ransomware/mallory[6].

[1] [https://www.tacit.dk/foldersync/](https://www.tacit.dk/foldersync/)

[2] [https://restic.net/](https://restic.net/)

[3] [https://rclone.org/](https://rclone.org/)

[4]
[https://rsync.net/products/rclone.html](https://rsync.net/products/rclone.html)

[5] [https://verticalbackup.com/](https://verticalbackup.com/)

[6]
[https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/snapshots.html](https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/snapshots.html)

~~~
tiffanyh
@rsync I’ve read you’re a major FreeBSD shop. What’s your currently feeling
about FreeBSD? How’s the current state of their OS support methodology? How’s
stability of the OS these days? Your thoughts on ZFS now separated from
FreeBSD. Etc.

You’re one of the few individuals who have the breadth and depth of experience
with FreeBSD for commercial use, I’m hoping to hear you’re thoughts.

~~~
693471
Most of my career has been working for shops running FreeBSD.

FreeBSD is doing just fine. ZFS change is not interesting. Previously upstream
was Illinois, now it's Linux. Support for releases changed but for the better.
Stability is still great, but it will be a while before I see servers with 10
years uptime on modern kernels again. If I'm lucky it won't happen because
they're getting patched...

------
voiper1
Wow, the prices are down to 2cents/GB, cheaper than standard AWS + without the
fees. [1]

Back in 2015, it was 20cents per GB. [2]

Besides ZFS with snapshots, one of their benefits vs "dumb" cloud storage is
you can run a server side component, e.g. borg which requires both a client
and server. They even have slightly reduced pricing (which isn't that big a
deal anymore, it was 3 cents vs 8-20 back in 2016 [3]) if you only need borg
and don't need the configuration support. [4]

EDIT: And, tons of other things I forgot about: git, s3cmd, and others! [5]

[1] [https://www.rsync.net/pricing.html](https://www.rsync.net/pricing.html)

[2]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20150509033924/https://www.rsync...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150509033924/https://www.rsync.net/pricing.html)

[3]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20160926192841/http://rsync.net/...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160926192841/http://rsync.net/products/attic.html)

[4] [http://rsync.net/products/borg.html](http://rsync.net/products/borg.html)

[5]
[https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/remote_commands.html](https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/remote_commands.html)

~~~
rsync
To be fair, we have let s3cmd wither on the vine a bit - I am not sure if
we've updated it in the past 18 months.

The reason being, anything s3cmd can do, rclone can do better. Right ?

~~~
ebg13
> _The reason being, anything s3cmd can do, rclone can do better. Right ?_

But is it better than s5cmd?

------
dceddia
I thought this was refreshing to see :)

> We are NOT reselling another cloud - we built and maintain our own
> infrastructure and have complete control over our platform.

> We've been doing this since 2001.

~~~
penagwin
Weekly warrant canaries too!

[https://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt](https://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt)

------
bachmeier
15 GB of storage would be nice.

Go to the "Simple Pricing" page. Click the 0-999 GB for 2 cents/GB link.
That's great pricing.

Select 15 GB.

Get message telling me the minimum is 500 GB.

That's not the kind of company I'm going to trust with my data. What other
kind of BS are they going to try to pull if they're willing to do something
like this before I'm even a customer?

Maybe they don't want small customers like me. That's okay. Just be honest
about it on your website.

~~~
rsync
"That's not the kind of company I'm going to trust with my data. What other
kind of BS are they going to try to pull if they're willing to do something
like this before I'm even a customer?"

I am sorry if that is confusing - it is not in any way meant to be a dark
pattern or misleading.

We can't charge people, for instance, 30 cents per month (as in your example)
- the fees or processing your card (or paypal payment) would be larger than
that.

The minimum order of 500 GB computes to $10 per month. If you have a very
tight budget, please email info@rsync.net and I will personally figure out a
way (annual payment, whatever) to make it work for you. It will be larger than
15 GB, however, unless you want to pay 5 years in advance.

I was just about to change the wording on the pricing page to be "500-9999 GB"
but that's even more confusing, IMO ... I think most people understand that
processing fees dictate a minimum order ...

~~~
sithadmin
>We can't charge people, for instance, 30 cents per month (as in your example)
- the fees or processing your card (or paypal payment) would be larger than
that.

You can - you just need to eliminate the card processing from most
transactions in these cases. Allow users to top up a balance with a minimum
buy-in that meets your processing threshold, and decrement that balance as
services are consumed.

This does require some degree of effort in terms of implementation and
accounting, but it drastically increases the appeal of your service to small
businesses and personal users.

~~~
pfranz
> This does require some degree of effort in terms of implementation and
> accounting

I feel like you're really downplaying what would be involved. It is a great
suggestion, but the effort to manage and implement doesn't sound trivial.
Personally, the few systems that exclusively use this model drive me nuts.
Instead of just paying for what I want I have to add to this account, then pay
for what I want.

For the business owner, they now have to account for and secure new account
balances. At a large scale (Starbucks has $1.6 billion [1]), you can likely
cover any additional regulatory and accounting costs and also make money. On a
small scale it can be a liability that costs more than it brings in.

[1]
[https://mobile.twitter.com/jp_koning/status/1160387043790413...](https://mobile.twitter.com/jp_koning/status/1160387043790413824)

~~~
sithadmin
Dealing with customer accounts that carry a credit is a rather mundane and
common bookkeeping exercise. Experienced accountants are unlikely to balk at
such a suggestion.

------
tiernano
Just signed up for 100gb Borg hosting for $18 for a year! That ain't bad. Some
lints (no zfs snapshots) but Borg should have snapshots covered. Waiting for
activation and will start playing around...

~~~
tiernano
More details here.
[https://www.rsync.net/products/borg.html](https://www.rsync.net/products/borg.html)

~~~
witten
Also check out borgmatic for configuring Borg. Works well with rsync.net:
[https://torsion.org/borgmatic/](https://torsion.org/borgmatic/)

------
voltagex_
I used to use this for <10GB with the old pricing model. Stopped when the
family needed something they could use (ended up on Office Home + OneDrive). I
could definitely find a use for 1-5GB of storage, but the minimum is 500GB
($10/USD month or $108/USD annually).

Sorry John, looks like you had to chase me a bit due to an expired credit
card. Hope I didn't cost too much for support.

The most useful thing to me would be being able to use git clone and rclone to
pull files closer to me, but I bet it's not an intended use case to use
rsync.net as a proxy.

------
tpmx
Does rsync.net have any way of doing two factor authentication, at least for
administration purposes?

Couldn't find anything on the site. Sure, I get that it's probably primarily
built for unattended automated backups, but still.

~~~
rsync
Yes. Our web based admin portal / management interface has 2FA options inside.

There are also options to lock your entire account (or just your
.ssh/authorized_keys file) to be read-only. The snapshots are always
immutable, but you can toggle your _entire account_ to be so, as well.

Finally, inside the web based management is an "idle alert" where you can
alert yourself (via email, SMS, pushover or webhook - or any combination
thereof) to your account being unchanged for a (user configurable) amount of
time.

~~~
tpmx
Nice! These points seem like things you might want to put on the web site.
(Did I miss it? I think I read through all of the public tech details/support
pages though.)

Btw: I found
[https://secured.fyi/Backup/rsync.net](https://secured.fyi/Backup/rsync.net)
while googling this topic, it seems at least partially incorrect.

------
fmakunbound
Would mounting an SFTP file system using FUSE and then mounting encfs or
veracrypt on top of that be reasonably reliable? I'm always concerned about my
data at rest on servers others have access to.

~~~
rsync
Yes. sshfs/FUSE is a very common use-case among rsync.net customers. However,
borg (and to a lesser degree, restic) is the typical solution for encryption
at rest.

~~~
stevekemp
I use your borg-only service, and love it.

I recall offering to donate you the .io domain at some point too!

------
zafiro17
I did some searching around and finally settled on rsync as a backup system
about 5 years ago, and I've been happy since. I don't understand the fixation
on finding the lowest price solution - pay more, get more. With rsync you get
their in-house hardware and engineers on the support desk. I use it to back up
my FreeNAS ZFS shares, which is dead-simple process, and a bunch of web
servers. Getting historical snapshots is genius. I also love being able to use
any SFTP client I like instead of some dedicated client or a web interface. My
data is not available through a web page - that's exactly the way I like it.
Bravo Rsync, keep up the good work.

------
moviuro
That snapshot[0] surely doesn't reflect the reality. Last Modified date is
"today" for all snapshots when you advertize an immutable storage. You should
also add the current date in the picture (just in case).

[0]
[https://www.rsync.net/images/duck2.png](https://www.rsync.net/images/duck2.png)
on [https://archive.is/3kK28](https://archive.is/3kK28)

------
kup0
Would consider using this if there wasn't a 500GB minimum.

------
dillonmckay
I never realized how good their pricing is!

~~~
voiper1
It's new, just a few years ago it was 20c!
[https://web.archive.org/web/20150509033924/https://www.rsync...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150509033924/https://www.rsync.net/pricing.html)

------
knorker
Wow, much cheaper than it used to be. I left them as a customer some years
back purely based on price, but now I'd consider moving back. Other than being
undercut by AWS (now also GCP) they were great.

------
sigy
The price levels have a gap between 1TB and 10TB, or am I missing something?

~~~
cirrrrrrus
9999 GB roughly equals to 9,999 TB

------
CloudBuddy
Here is another option if you don't have much to store -
[https://cloudbuddy.cloud](https://cloudbuddy.cloud)

------
ivanhoe
Is there option for having monthly/yearly snapshots?

~~~
rsync
Yes. You can specify any arbitrary schedule of
days/weeks/months/quarters/years.

They are efficiently stored so if your data doesn't change much, they will
take up almost no space - even though they present your _entire filesystem_
from that date.

------
bndw
What is Physical Media Shipment?

~~~
rsync
If you need your data _right now_ and your network connection isn't fast
enough to do it in a timely manner, we will dump your data to a bare SATA
drive and fedex it to you.

Alternatively, if you have many TB to upload and your network connection makes
that unworkable, we will _accept_ your bare SATA drive for the onloading
process.

~~~
bndw
Awesome, thanks for the response.

------
sdan
Too expensive given the app.

S3/Google give around 2 cents/GB a month (lower for cold storage) but you also
get to access it through the web... what's the benefit with this?

~~~
dillonmckay
[https://rsync.net/resources/howto/snapshots.html](https://rsync.net/resources/howto/snapshots.html)

You get 7 free snapshots that do not count against your quota.

Additional snapshots are charged based on the byte diffs, not total size.

It uses a standard protocol and anything that uses ssh can conceivably
communicate with it.

Oh, and you are not charged for transfer.

~~~
snthpy
How is this sort of thing not abused?

Say I generate logs at say 1 GB/hr and store them in files named `logs.$(date
+%Y%m%dT%H)` and I have it set up to take snapshots every 4 hours and delete
files older than 5 hours, then I could have essentially unlimited storage and
only ever pay for 5 GB/month?

~~~
pnutjam
you only get 7 free snapshots, and if the others are totally different then
your live data, you'll pay for them.

~~~
snthpy
Ok, I had understood it as 7 free snapshots per day.

