[Duplicity-talk] re: backup design question (Brian Mathias)

[Joel Carter]

Hey there Brian.

I can see both benefits and disadvantages  to running Duplicity
locally within your network (from your workstations to servers).
Benefits are that you could assign different encryption pass phrases
to each workstation, so even on the server the files wouldn't be
useful if someone got their hands on them. Another is that all your
workstations have their backups in different sets so that should
something go wrong with the set you lose the backup for just that
workstation, if they were all combined then you have all your eggs in
one basket. The disadvantage I can think of is that you're adding more
complication which is always a bad idea with backup solutions. That
said, Duplicity is already a fairly complicated backup solution in
comparison to others. Remember to always test your restores since
backups are useless if when you need to restore data you can't. Learn
how to do it before hand and test it occasionally to make sure it's
still working!

Finally, I would really look into rsync for your transfers from server
to off-site storage, it is really the preferred mechanism over FTP and
will save you all sorts of headaches. From my experience rsync just
works.

Joel..

On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 9:01 AM,  <address@hidden> wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I'm new here, so please accept my apology if this is not the appropriate
> place for this question.
>
> Some background: I am attempting to setup an off-site backup solution with a
> few friends.  I'm planning to backup data from my network workstations to a
> server that will ultimately handle the slow and lengthy off-site backup.
> The server will also have the role of accepting other people's backups.  I'm
> looking at using FTP since the data will already be encrypted and it would
> have less overhead than SCP.
>
> Originally I was looking at using rsync to keep data synced to my server,
> and then use duplicity to encrypt and send the data off-site.  My question
> is, would there be any downside to using duplicity from workstations to the
> server, and them just using rsync to replicate the encrypted data off-site?
> Since this server is accessible from the Internet, I'd rather my data not be
> sitting there unencrypted before it's sent out.
>
> If anyone has any ideas, I'd greatly appreciate your time and attention.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Brian Mathias
> www.digitalmustache.com