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rsync.net was posted here on HN a few days ago. Also, tarsnap is another popular service. Neither have the special additions that makes Backblaze so popular, b

rsync.net was posted here on HN a few days ago. Also, tarsnap is another popular service. Neither have the special additions that makes Backblaze so popular, but could be popular alternatives.

latchkey 6y ago
vorta + borg backing up to cloud disk.
minxomat 6y ago
If you’re in the EU, Hetzner Storage boxes.
- danieldk 6y ago
  Keep in mind that their storage boxes only use RAID and do not provide any other kind of redundancy by default. If the machine goes up in flames, your data is gone.
Skunkleton 6y ago
Rsync.net has a self-supported borg option that is a great deal.
thayne 6y ago
From a quick look at pricing pages it looks like rsync.net is 5x as expensive as backblaze b2, and has a minimum of 400gb per month (it also looks like you might have to preallocate vs pay on demand). And tarsnap is 10x as expensive as rsync.net. My guess the bulk of that price difference is due to economies of scale.
- jiveturkey 6y ago
  the rsync guy posted in another recent thread that it’s actually 3x above a certain size, which i took to be most serious usage.
- kelnos 6y ago
  I don't have huge backup needs (around 500GB, doesn't grow much over time), so I just use duplicity and upload to AWS S3 with the "infrequent access" setting, and have the bucket auto-replicate to another region in another country. Costs me around $12/mo just for the data storage. The AWS calculator tells me if I had to retrieve all that data it would cost under $10 to do so. Given it's all personal data that I can stand to be without for days if needed, I could probably use Glacier (or even Glacier Deep Archive) and pay less than a third of the cost (or less than a twelfth!), but the absolute dollar amount isn't high enough for me to go through the trouble of changing up my backup scripts. Sure, if you're running a business and are constantly generating lots of new data that needs to be backed up, that gets more expensive, but I also would expect a business with that much data could easily afford to spend several orders of magnitude more than I do on backups.
  - monsieurbanana 6y ago
    I use Linode Object Storage (a S3-like service) with rclone to manage my backups. (my backups are only a few dozens of gb, I don't need something like duplicity at the moment) So far I'm happy with it, pricing is $5/month per 250gb + 1To egress. And, most importantly, none of the AWS complexity overhead. I have enough of that at work.
- viraptor 6y ago
  One big difference is that with B2 you can't have append-only backups. (or maybe it's very non-obvious from the docs?) That's pretty much why I use rsync.net instead - I can configure a separate key for uploads. Otherwise what's to stop anyone lifting the B2 access key from the host with automatic backups configured and just deleting all old data?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- rsync 6y ago
  "(it also looks like you might have to preallocate vs pay on demand)" Technically you do have to pre-allocate, but it works like pay-on-demand because: <paste> We can increase the size of your filesystem at any time, with no downtime involved - so there is no need to overbuy in anticipation of future usage. Further, you are granted a +10% grace at all times, so you always have some room to grow. Finally, the system automatically emails you as you get close to your limit, so there is never an unexpected filling of space. </paste>
  - thayne 6y ago
    You still have to manage how much storage you have allocated, instead of just using it and paying based on how much storage you actually use.
gpm 6y ago
So, looking at some potential things to switch to... OVH has two interesting products here: OVH cloud archive works with rsync, costs roughly half as much for storage as blackblaze, roughly the same for egress, but charges for ingress (at the same rate as egress). OVH object store is s3 compatible (like blackblaze), charges roughly the same for bandwidth, 2x for storage. https://www.ovhcloud.com/en/public-cloud/prices/#439 https://www.ovhcloud.com/en/public-cloud/prices/#439 Digitalocean has a blob store with the same pricing on bandwidth, 4x the pricing on storage, a minimum spend of $5/month on storage, but the first tb ($10) of bandwidth free. https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing#spaces-object-storage https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing#spaces-object-storage
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Also, you know OVH will be investing significantly in fire prevention strategies, so that will all be state of the art.
  - spzb 6y ago
    Well, you would hope they would be but then they thought they had done so already and look how that worked out.
    - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
      Before you experience a major problem, you tend to guess what is good enough to mitigate it. Once you've experienced a major problem, you tend to ensure that exact failure mode never happens again. I would be surprised if OVH had another fire in the future.
    - celsoazevedo 6y ago
      And that's why we should always keep backups somewhere else.
- avinassh 6y ago
  > OVH cloud archive seems this the cheapest of all
tbodt 6y ago
The only reason I use Backblaze instead of tarsnap is it is 62 times cheaper for the same amount of storage. tarsnap is dramatically overpriced if you ask me.
- jlawer 6y ago
  I get the feeling the reason for the Tarsnap price is simply a lack of scale and bootstrap nature of it. (i.e. there isn't a VC feeding money into hosting costs to drive the costs down to grow the userbase). The cost seems fair, but noncompetitive against other vendors on most easy to find quantitative measures (Cost, features, SLAs, locations, etc). However I do think there is value in Tarsnap if security is really that important. Colin is really switched on, and I trust both the service, and if anything happened, he would deal with it quickly and professionally. If I had the kind of profile that meant I needed to protect myself against determined attackers, then tarsnap would be a no-brainer for me.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Backblaze is also bootstrapped, no VC investment except a small initial round. They’re likely investing in the business using the profits thrown off by their unlimited desktop storage offering.
- nvarsj 6y ago
  It's more of the fact that S3 is expensive for storing lots of data, isn't it? I think tarsnap charges only a small margin on top of S3.
  - floatboth 6y ago
    And tarsnap possibly uses the most expensive tier of S3: > the original version, which can survive the loss of 2 datacenters, not the "reduced redundancy" version which can only survive the loss of a single datacenter These days, there's not just reduced redundancy, but also infrequent access, which seems better for backups…
avinassh 6y ago
may it's just me, I had a hard time calculating the pricing of tarsnap. Wish they had provided an easy calculator too, on their site.
varispeed 6y ago
Does rsync.net offer end to end encryption of data?
- rsync 6y ago
  Yes, of course. First, we only offer SSH / TCP22 so the transit is encrypted. Second, we have installed, and maintain on the server side tools like 'borg' and 'rclone'. So while you might just 'rsync' or 'sftp' your data to us (in which cases it would not be encrypted on our end) you can also use sophisticated, encrypted backup tools like (borg, duplicity, git-annex, rclone, restic, etc.) If you choose a tool like that, rsync.net does not hold the encryption keys. The data appears to be random from our viewpoint.
  - varispeed 6y ago
    This is great, thank you!

rsync.net was posted here on HN a few days ago. Also, tarsnap is another popular service. Neither have the special additions that makes Backblaze so popular, but could be popular alternatives.

latchkey 6y ago

vorta + borg backing up to cloud disk.

minxomat 6y ago

If you’re in the EU, Hetzner Storage boxes.

danieldk 6y ago
Keep in mind that their storage boxes only use RAID and do not provide any other kind of redundancy by default. If the machine goes up in flames, your data is gone.

Skunkleton 6y ago

Rsync.net has a self-supported borg option that is a great deal.

thayne 6y ago

From a quick look at pricing pages it looks like rsync.net is 5x as expensive as backblaze b2, and has a minimum of 400gb per month (it also looks like you might have to preallocate vs pay on demand). And tarsnap is 10x as expensive as rsync.net. My guess the bulk of that price difference is due to economies of scale.

jiveturkey 6y ago
the rsync guy posted in another recent thread that it’s actually 3x above a certain size, which i took to be most serious usage.
kelnos 6y ago
I don't have huge backup needs (around 500GB, doesn't grow much over time), so I just use duplicity and upload to AWS S3 with the "infrequent access" setting, and have the bucket auto-replicate to another region in another country. Costs me around $12/mo just for the data storage. The AWS calculator tells me if I had to retrieve all that data it would cost under $10 to do so. Given it's all personal data that I can stand to be without for days if needed, I could probably use Glacier (or even Glacier Deep Archive) and pay less than a third of the cost (or less than a twelfth!), but the absolute dollar amount isn't high enough for me to go through the trouble of changing up my backup scripts. Sure, if you're running a business and are constantly generating lots of new data that needs to be backed up, that gets more expensive, but I also would expect a business with that much data could easily afford to spend several orders of magnitude more than I do on backups.
- monsieurbanana 6y ago
  I use Linode Object Storage (a S3-like service) with rclone to manage my backups. (my backups are only a few dozens of gb, I don't need something like duplicity at the moment) So far I'm happy with it, pricing is $5/month per 250gb + 1To egress. And, most importantly, none of the AWS complexity overhead. I have enough of that at work.
viraptor 6y ago
One big difference is that with B2 you can't have append-only backups. (or maybe it's very non-obvious from the docs?) That's pretty much why I use rsync.net instead - I can configure a separate key for uploads. Otherwise what's to stop anyone lifting the B2 access key from the host with automatic backups configured and just deleting all old data?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
rsync 6y ago
"(it also looks like you might have to preallocate vs pay on demand)" Technically you do have to pre-allocate, but it works like pay-on-demand because: <paste> We can increase the size of your filesystem at any time, with no downtime involved - so there is no need to overbuy in anticipation of future usage. Further, you are granted a +10% grace at all times, so you always have some room to grow. Finally, the system automatically emails you as you get close to your limit, so there is never an unexpected filling of space. </paste>
- thayne 6y ago
  You still have to manage how much storage you have allocated, instead of just using it and paying based on how much storage you actually use.

gpm 6y ago

So, looking at some potential things to switch to... OVH has two interesting products here: OVH cloud archive works with rsync, costs roughly half as much for storage as blackblaze, roughly the same for egress, but charges for ingress (at the same rate as egress). OVH object store is s3 compatible (like blackblaze), charges roughly the same for bandwidth, 2x for storage. https://www.ovhcloud.com/en/public-cloud/prices/#439 https://www.ovhcloud.com/en/public-cloud/prices/#439 Digitalocean has a blob store with the same pricing on bandwidth, 4x the pricing on storage, a minimum spend of $5/month on storage, but the first tb ($10) of bandwidth free. https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing#spaces-object-storage https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing#spaces-object-storage

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Also, you know OVH will be investing significantly in fire prevention strategies, so that will all be state of the art.
- spzb 6y ago
  Well, you would hope they would be but then they thought they had done so already and look how that worked out.
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    Before you experience a major problem, you tend to guess what is good enough to mitigate it. Once you've experienced a major problem, you tend to ensure that exact failure mode never happens again. I would be surprised if OVH had another fire in the future.
  - celsoazevedo 6y ago
    And that's why we should always keep backups somewhere else.
avinassh 6y ago
> OVH cloud archive seems this the cheapest of all

tbodt 6y ago

The only reason I use Backblaze instead of tarsnap is it is 62 times cheaper for the same amount of storage. tarsnap is dramatically overpriced if you ask me.

jlawer 6y ago
I get the feeling the reason for the Tarsnap price is simply a lack of scale and bootstrap nature of it. (i.e. there isn't a VC feeding money into hosting costs to drive the costs down to grow the userbase). The cost seems fair, but noncompetitive against other vendors on most easy to find quantitative measures (Cost, features, SLAs, locations, etc). However I do think there is value in Tarsnap if security is really that important. Colin is really switched on, and I trust both the service, and if anything happened, he would deal with it quickly and professionally. If I had the kind of profile that meant I needed to protect myself against determined attackers, then tarsnap would be a no-brainer for me.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Backblaze is also bootstrapped, no VC investment except a small initial round. They’re likely investing in the business using the profits thrown off by their unlimited desktop storage offering.
nvarsj 6y ago
It's more of the fact that S3 is expensive for storing lots of data, isn't it? I think tarsnap charges only a small margin on top of S3.
- floatboth 6y ago
  And tarsnap possibly uses the most expensive tier of S3: > the original version, which can survive the loss of 2 datacenters, not the "reduced redundancy" version which can only survive the loss of a single datacenter These days, there's not just reduced redundancy, but also infrequent access, which seems better for backups…

avinassh 6y ago

may it's just me, I had a hard time calculating the pricing of tarsnap. Wish they had provided an easy calculator too, on their site.

varispeed 6y ago

Does rsync.net offer end to end encryption of data?

rsync 6y ago
Yes, of course. First, we only offer SSH / TCP22 so the transit is encrypted. Second, we have installed, and maintain on the server side tools like 'borg' and 'rclone'. So while you might just 'rsync' or 'sftp' your data to us (in which cases it would not be encrypted on our end) you can also use sophisticated, encrypted backup tools like (borg, duplicity, git-annex, rclone, restic, etc.) If you choose a tool like that, rsync.net does not hold the encryption keys. The data appears to be random from our viewpoint.
- varispeed 6y ago
  This is great, thank you!