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Tarsnap – Online backups for the truly paranoid

tarsnap.com

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Re: Tarsnap – Online backups for the truly paranoid

#21

Post by nodesocket »

cperciva wrote: post #17
nodesocket wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Colin, Any interest or thoughts about adding Google Cloud Storage as an option vs AWS S3? S3 (us-east-1) runs $0.023 per GB. Google Cloud Storage in a single region runs slightly less at $0.02 per GB. Howerver, bandwidth may be the biggest cost factor for you not storage.

The price difference between S3 and Google Cloud Storage isn't enough to make a meaningful difference, particularly since I'd need to set up server code in Google Cloud to manage it. Bandwidth isn't a huge cost; but the server which keeps track of where all the bits are in S3 and shuffles them around is surprisingly expensive.

Curious what AWS instance type you are using for that machine that keeps track of all the Tarsnap bits? I'm guessing it is highly available, so multiple instances of that type?

Re: Tarsnap – Online backups for the truly paranoid

#22

Post by nickpsecurity »

nodesocket wrote: post #16
no_protocol wrote: post #12

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 every…

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.

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.

Re: Tarsnap – Online backups for the truly paranoid

#23

Post by cperciva »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #18
cperciva wrote: post #2

Not sure why Tarsnap has bubbled up on HN again, but I'm always happy to answer questions about Tarsnap if there's anything anyone here wants to know.

How many copies do you keep of the data to avoid corruption in storage?

Tarsnap data is stored in S3, with cryptographic authentication codes to detect any corruption; while data corruption has been detected in transit on many occasions (and requests retried as a result), I am not aware of S3 ever corrupting any data in situ.

Re: Tarsnap – Online backups for the truly paranoid

#24

Post by nickpsecurity »

cperciva wrote: post #23
nickpsecurity wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many copies do you keep of the data to avoid corruption in storage?

Tarsnap data is stored in S3, with cryptographic authentication codes to detect any corruption; while data corruption has been detected in transit on many occasions (and requests retried as a result), I am not aware of S3 ever corrupting any data in situ .

Thank you.

Re: Tarsnap – Online backups for the truly paranoid

#25

Post by nodesocket »

no_protocol wrote: post #19
nodesocket wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Of course not. I'm mainly trying to show that it is incredibly cost-effective for this particular use case.

Sorry if my comment seemed rude, not my intention. I've had too much coffee and wound a bit too tight today.

Re: Tarsnap – Online backups for the truly paranoid

#26

Post by forgotpwtomain »

This has appeared on HN a few times.. I'd really like to use tarsnap but it's simply too expensive to be viable (to which I guess the response is: don't use tarsnap for full-backups -- but this makes it practically useless as far as diminishing the complexity of my current backup scheme[0]).

[0] http://duplicity.nongnu.org/

Re: Tarsnap – Online backups for the truly paranoid

#27

Post by kobayashi »

forgotpwtomain wrote: post #26

This has appeared on HN a few times.. I'd really like to use tarsnap but it's simply too expensive to be viable (to which I guess the response is: don't use tarsnap for full-backups -- but this makes it practically useless as far as diminishing the complexity of my current backup scheme[0]). [0] http://duplicity.nongnu.org/

I'm a little unclear - does Duplicity run on macOS?

Re: Tarsnap – Online backups for the truly paranoid

#28

Post by LukeShu »

cperciva wrote: post #15
Gracana wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like that it works like tar and that the website works perfectly in lynx, which are two things that make my life easier when I'm dealing with a catastrophe.

Funny story about lynx: We were recently making some fixes to improve the website on mobile devices and the question came up "how should the site behave if the screen is too narrow to keep the navigation on the left side of the site?" My immediate reply: "You see how the site behaves in lynx? It should behave like that."

"We"? Is Tarsnap no longer just you?

Re: Tarsnap – Online backups for the truly paranoid

#29

Post by nodesocket »

forgotpwtomain wrote: post #26

This has appeared on HN a few times.. I'd really like to use tarsnap but it's simply too expensive to be viable (to which I guess the response is: don't use tarsnap for full-backups -- but this makes it practically useless as far as diminishing the complexity of my current backup scheme[0]). [0] http://duplicity.nongnu.org/

How much data are you trying to store?
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