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How's the saying in every HN thread go? "Don't set your prices based on your costs, set your prices based on the value you deliver." or something like that. Ta

How's the saying in every HN thread go? "Don't set your prices based on your costs, set your prices based on the value you deliver." or something like that. Tarsnap is a wonderful piece of software. You're paying for that. That said, is the value of "Tarsnap" worth the price difference from "Borg+rsync.net"? (Or Restic, I've been meaning to look into Restic). I'm not so sure. These days I'm a customer of rsync.net, not of Tarsnap. But I still firmly disagree with the "Colin's just exploiting the uninformed" angle.

patrec 3y ago
Completely ignoring costs, can you name a single use case for which tarsnap would be better than Borg or restic on rsync.net?
- i_have_an_idea 3y ago
  As a consultant on a DR project, you can increase your billables by 10x due to the extremely slow backup restore speeds.
- doolallylah 3y ago
  Backing up anything Windows with more granularity than top level directories? Ugh. Try picking a choosing specific file types or file extensions from filesystems holding thousands of files. I ended up having to cobble together some god-awful pre-process powershell with multiple pipes just because restic fails to be able to grep using Windows reliably. :(
  - tredre3 3y ago
    > restic fails to be able to grep using Windows reliably That is news to me. I backup almost a million files spread across 4 Windows devices, with heavy use of --files-from and --iexclude and it seems to work. What am I missing? I agree that restic filtering options are pretty limited. Too limited, really. But what's there seems to work?
- rssoconnor 3y ago
  With regards to restic, Tarsnap preforms asymmetric encryption which lets you perform automated backups without needing to enter any passwords (or otherwise storing your encryption passwords in plain text). With regards to duplicity, Tarsnap does full deduplication across all backups for any given "machine", while still letting you independently remove any snapshots you like. i.e. no special "full snapshot" that must always be kept around, and no need for multiple full snapshots that have no deduplication between them.
electroly 3y ago
rsync.net is also overpriced for strictly backup purposes. Make sure you do check out restic; it can use S3 or Backblaze B2 (I actually use both) as backends instead of something expensive like rsync.net. The value of these boutique storage services evaporates when you start using restic.
- AnonHP 3y ago
  The complexity with S3 or Backblaze B2 is the granular pricing for various operations on the service. It’s difficult to optimize costs compared to a fixed “$X per GB” pricing that’s easier for people to understand and forecast expenses a bit more easily. Other than that, rsync.net provides the same pricing for different days center locations, which means there is some subsidization going on. There are services like rsync.net that support borg at a lower price. Borgbase is one of them. I haven’t used either of these.
  - LukeShu 3y ago
    > There are services like rsync.net that support borg at a lower price. And rsync.net is even one of them! "Special "borg accounts" are available at a very deep discount for technically proficient users." -- https://www.rsync.net/products/borg.html https://www.rsync.net/products/borg.html ...hrm, it seems they didn't update that page with last year's price drop. https://web.archive.org/web/20220319135035/https://www.rsync.net/pricing.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220319135035/https://www.rsync... It used to be a deep discount, now it's the same for <100TB. I wonder if they did drop the Borg prices too and just forgot to update that page?
- mekster 3y ago
  I treat zfs far more reliable than restic which is still rough around the edges the last time I tried a few years ago. Run rsync to the target and forget is quite easy, though I admit rsync.net's deal is getting worse these days posing minimum usages here and there.

patrec 3y ago

Completely ignoring costs, can you name a single use case for which tarsnap would be better than Borg or restic on rsync.net?

i_have_an_idea 3y ago
As a consultant on a DR project, you can increase your billables by 10x due to the extremely slow backup restore speeds.
doolallylah 3y ago
Backing up anything Windows with more granularity than top level directories? Ugh. Try picking a choosing specific file types or file extensions from filesystems holding thousands of files. I ended up having to cobble together some god-awful pre-process powershell with multiple pipes just because restic fails to be able to grep using Windows reliably. :(
- tredre3 3y ago
  > restic fails to be able to grep using Windows reliably That is news to me. I backup almost a million files spread across 4 Windows devices, with heavy use of --files-from and --iexclude and it seems to work. What am I missing? I agree that restic filtering options are pretty limited. Too limited, really. But what's there seems to work?
rssoconnor 3y ago
With regards to restic, Tarsnap preforms asymmetric encryption which lets you perform automated backups without needing to enter any passwords (or otherwise storing your encryption passwords in plain text). With regards to duplicity, Tarsnap does full deduplication across all backups for any given "machine", while still letting you independently remove any snapshots you like. i.e. no special "full snapshot" that must always be kept around, and no need for multiple full snapshots that have no deduplication between them.

electroly 3y ago

rsync.net is also overpriced for strictly backup purposes. Make sure you do check out restic; it can use S3 or Backblaze B2 (I actually use both) as backends instead of something expensive like rsync.net. The value of these boutique storage services evaporates when you start using restic.

AnonHP 3y ago
The complexity with S3 or Backblaze B2 is the granular pricing for various operations on the service. It’s difficult to optimize costs compared to a fixed “$X per GB” pricing that’s easier for people to understand and forecast expenses a bit more easily. Other than that, rsync.net provides the same pricing for different days center locations, which means there is some subsidization going on. There are services like rsync.net that support borg at a lower price. Borgbase is one of them. I haven’t used either of these.
- LukeShu 3y ago
  > There are services like rsync.net that support borg at a lower price. And rsync.net is even one of them! "Special "borg accounts" are available at a very deep discount for technically proficient users." -- https://www.rsync.net/products/borg.html https://www.rsync.net/products/borg.html ...hrm, it seems they didn't update that page with last year's price drop. https://web.archive.org/web/20220319135035/https://www.rsync.net/pricing.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220319135035/https://www.rsync... It used to be a deep discount, now it's the same for <100TB. I wonder if they did drop the Borg prices too and just forgot to update that page?
mekster 3y ago
I treat zfs far more reliable than restic which is still rough around the edges the last time I tried a few years ago. Run rsync to the target and forget is quite easy, though I admit rsync.net's deal is getting worse these days posing minimum usages here and there.