

Ask HN: Trustworthy backup service? - jonweber

A particular pain point that I&#x27;ve had managing websites and services hosted over a hodgepodge of shared hosting accounts and VPSes is centralized and secure backup of web content and databases. AKA, I can schedule complete backups of the source files and database contents across multiple hosting accounts.<p>While some hosting services have their own internal backup systems, and there are a number of local backup clients you can run, the market of cloud backup service providers that offer a backup-everything service seems to be pretty sparse.<p>Of course, the major caveat is that in order for such a service to work, you must provide them with credentials to access all of your servers. While services like Mint seem to have slowly made more people comfortable with this idea, it still feels &quot;wrong&quot;.<p>What solutions exist for this problem? Has anybody had experiences (good or bad) with cloud backup providers like dropmysite.com or similar services?
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hackuser
Thinking out loud: At each host, backup to an encrypted local store (only you
have to access the crypyto-key(s)). Then have the centralized backup service
copy those encrypted stores.

You need more storage and it's more labor to setup, both of which could be
impractical depending on the systems you manage, but the central service would
have no access to anything confidential. Also, integration between the central
backup and the variety of local hosts would be greatly simplified, with no
file locks, database backups, consistency issues, backup window coordination,
etc.

EDIT: Also, the granularity of available recovery points might be limited, at
least from the central service. Block-level backups (and the associate
recovery points), for example, could be implemented locally but might be hard
to implement on the central service.

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jonweber
This is a great idea - unfortunately, some of the servers I need to back up
are feature-poor shared hosting accounts where it would be difficult or
impossible to run a script that serves this purpose locally.

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cweagans
Do yourself a favor and stop using shared hosting services. A few years ago,
you could justify it because of the cost. VPSes are _so_ cheap these days,
though, that it's silly to hamstring yourself with shared hosting. Digital
Ocean is a good place to start, and they'll even pre-install LAMP for you if
you want. $5/mo for your own box.

~~~
jonweber
I've been planning to get everything off the shared hosting accounts for
awhile. Is Digital Ocean a better deal than, say, AWS for hosting dynamic
websites?

~~~
cweagans
It's definitely cheaper.

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cweagans
Tarsnap. Cheap, encrypted, and reliable.

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marketingadvice
If you can get the backups as dump files, have them sent to a Dropbox account
or remotely to a server. Then install Backblaze or Crashplan on that server.

You end up with a Dropbox backup, server backup and a 3rd backup via Backblaze
or Crashplan.

Cost is around $10/mo for Dropbox, $30 - 40/mo for a server if you go with OVH
and $5/mo for Backblaze or Crashplan.

