5 ms·

I see some comments here from people wondering why anyone would use this or searching for use cases. I'll share mine. I use tarsnap to keep daily backups of a

I see some comments here from people wondering why anyone would use this or searching for use cases. I'll share mine. I use tarsnap to keep daily backups of a web server with a handful of sites. I send over their content, configuration, and database backups. This isn't $$$-critical stuff so I just make a once-daily database backup and I'm fine with that. Every few months I verify one of the backups to make sure everything is still working, but it is extremely hands-off. I just don't have to think about it. It is currently costing me about 3 cents per day. I could probably reduce that a bit with some pruning. It was 2 cents per day for a while. Here is my most recent billing statement: 2016-01-26 Balance 43.152827492555316729 Client->Server Bandwidth 8.2MB 0.002069643750000000 Server->Client Bandwidth 41.2kB 0.000010296000000000 Daily storage 3.35GB 0.027041509164110040 2016-01-27 Balance 43.123706043641206689 So far I have used a total of $7 of my $50 deposit. Let's hope Colin keeps the service running at least until I've worked through that. Might be a few more years, though. Here are my statistics: $ tarsnap --list-archives | wc -l 496 $ tarsnap --print-stats --humanize-numbers Total size Compressed size All archives 200 GB 86 GB (unique data) 8.4 GB 3.3 GB It appears I have been using it for about 496 days. I can access any specific day's snapshot and download it if I need. The 3.3GB here is the same as the 3.3GB for daily storage on my billing statement. I'm guessing that is also very close to the total amount of Client->Server traffic I have generated in my account's lifetime. Probably within a few percent? Not sure if I can quickly verify though.

nodesocket 10y ago
2¢, 3¢, 10¢ per day, does that really matter? We are talking about less than a Starbucks for a full month of backups. Sorry, but developers who literally optimize cents over their time and effort is a pet peeve of mine.
- no_protocol 10y ago
  Of course not. I'm mainly trying to show that it is incredibly cost-effective for this particular use case.
  - nodesocket 10y ago
    Sorry if my comment seemed rude, not my intention. I've had too much coffee and wound a bit too tight today.
- cperciva 10y ago
  2¢, 3¢, 10¢ per day, does that really matter? It doesn't matter right now, but if you're building a company which you hope to scale up, it's good to have costs which won't get too big when said scaling happens -- because when your company explodes overnight, you're going to be too busy keeping everything else running to spend time reworking your backup strategy. (Also: If you don't have backups now because you're "not big enough to have data worth protecting", you're going to be too busy to start doing backups when you suddenly do have data worth protecting.)
  - skrebbel 10y ago
    > but if you're building a company which you hope to scale up This is a popular sentiment among engineers at startups and in my opinion founders should work hard to (kindly) beat it out of the team as soon as possible. Basically, you can use that line to justify nearly any engineer hobby. We need microservices! We need message queues! We need master-to-master replicated NoSQL databases spread geographically! We need Redis, Kafka and Cassandra with a CQRS event source pumping data in there, oh and also to a Postgres so we can do arbitrary queries for management reports! We need our backups to cost not 3 but 2 cents a month! But the truth is that, statistically, the chance that a startup will not actually scale up, is much bigger than the chance that once it does, the sharply increasing Tarsnap bill is going to drive it to bankruptcy. I agree with you that you need backups from the start, but whether they cost $.02 per month or $10 per month initially really doesn't matter. There's a lot of features to build (and kill), users acquire, content to market, and the team is tiny. I used to laugh about Twitter during their early growth days, fail whales all over the place. "What, they made that in Rails? Idiots". Now that I'm a startup founder myself, I realize that they did it perfectly right and I strongly doubt Twitter would've been what it is today if they had wasted time getting the perfectly scalable tweet processing timeline before putting the site out there.
    - _dax 10y ago
      I think it's a false dichotomy that great architecture and fast iteration are at odds. In fact, great architecture is what allows fast iteration to happen. Yes, simplify your system by using as few moving parts as possible. But that also means don't use bloated frameworks that silently slow down your iteration pace with technical debt. So many startups I've consulted with were stuck with having to redo core architecture right when they found market fit. It's a tough position to be in. The main rule to follow is that good design allows better design to happen later, it's worth investing in that
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  I see what you're saying but like the breakdown anyway. The fact that it's "less than a Starbucks for a full month of backups" at 2-3 cents a day is a good, selling point. If it UI was layperson friendly, that line by itself would get a bunch of customers.
- adim86 10y ago
  Honestly, I think he was just trying to illustrate how inexpensive the system is by showing how cheap it is and saying it could even go lower if someone cared enough (Which I don't think he does). That was my take away, not that he needed to optimize it

nodesocket 10y ago

2¢, 3¢, 10¢ per day, does that really matter? We are talking about less than a Starbucks for a full month of backups. Sorry, but developers who literally optimize cents over their time and effort is a pet peeve of mine.

no_protocol 10y ago
Of course not. I'm mainly trying to show that it is incredibly cost-effective for this particular use case.
- nodesocket 10y ago
  Sorry if my comment seemed rude, not my intention. I've had too much coffee and wound a bit too tight today.
cperciva 10y ago
2¢, 3¢, 10¢ per day, does that really matter? It doesn't matter right now, but if you're building a company which you hope to scale up, it's good to have costs which won't get too big when said scaling happens -- because when your company explodes overnight, you're going to be too busy keeping everything else running to spend time reworking your backup strategy. (Also: If you don't have backups now because you're "not big enough to have data worth protecting", you're going to be too busy to start doing backups when you suddenly do have data worth protecting.)
- skrebbel 10y ago
  > but if you're building a company which you hope to scale up This is a popular sentiment among engineers at startups and in my opinion founders should work hard to (kindly) beat it out of the team as soon as possible. Basically, you can use that line to justify nearly any engineer hobby. We need microservices! We need message queues! We need master-to-master replicated NoSQL databases spread geographically! We need Redis, Kafka and Cassandra with a CQRS event source pumping data in there, oh and also to a Postgres so we can do arbitrary queries for management reports! We need our backups to cost not 3 but 2 cents a month! But the truth is that, statistically, the chance that a startup will not actually scale up, is much bigger than the chance that once it does, the sharply increasing Tarsnap bill is going to drive it to bankruptcy. I agree with you that you need backups from the start, but whether they cost $.02 per month or $10 per month initially really doesn't matter. There's a lot of features to build (and kill), users acquire, content to market, and the team is tiny. I used to laugh about Twitter during their early growth days, fail whales all over the place. "What, they made that in Rails? Idiots". Now that I'm a startup founder myself, I realize that they did it perfectly right and I strongly doubt Twitter would've been what it is today if they had wasted time getting the perfectly scalable tweet processing timeline before putting the site out there.
  - _dax 10y ago
    I think it's a false dichotomy that great architecture and fast iteration are at odds. In fact, great architecture is what allows fast iteration to happen. Yes, simplify your system by using as few moving parts as possible. But that also means don't use bloated frameworks that silently slow down your iteration pace with technical debt. So many startups I've consulted with were stuck with having to redo core architecture right when they found market fit. It's a tough position to be in. The main rule to follow is that good design allows better design to happen later, it's worth investing in that
nickpsecurity 10y ago
I see what you're saying but like the breakdown anyway. The fact that it's "less than a Starbucks for a full month of backups" at 2-3 cents a day is a good, selling point. If it UI was layperson friendly, that line by itself would get a bunch of customers.
adim86 10y ago
Honestly, I think he was just trying to illustrate how inexpensive the system is by showing how cheap it is and saying it could even go lower if someone cared enough (Which I don't think he does). That was my take away, not that he needed to optimize it