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Ask HN: Help me fix your backups

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Re: Ask HN: Help me fix your backups

#2

Post by pwim »

As a software development company, all of our code is in a git repository that has a remote on a VPS. Our documents are primarily Google docs. Important docs are checked into git.

Nothing we have locally that is important is not also at some remote location.

Re: Ask HN: Help me fix your backups

#3

Post by drewcrawford »

pwim wrote: post #2

As a software development company, all of our code is in a git repository that has a remote on a VPS. Our documents are primarily Google docs. Important docs are checked into git. Nothing we have locally that is important is not also at some remote location.

Thanks, that is great feedback. Maybe so much is web-based now that backups aren't really relevant.

Is there any pain associated with restoring your dev environment? How long would it take you to get your text editor reinstalled, color scheme set back up, system preferences back, etc.?

Re: Ask HN: Help me fix your backups

#4

Post by dlsspy »

drewcrawford wrote: post #3
pwim wrote: post #2

As a software development company, all of our code is in a git repository that has a remote on a VPS. Our documents are primarily Google docs. Important docs are checked into git. Nothing we have locally that is important is not also at some remote location.

Thanks, that is great feedback. Maybe so much is web-based now that backups aren't really relevant. Is there any pain associated with restoring your dev environment? How long would it take you to get your text editor reinstalled, color scheme set back up, system preferences back, etc.?

Almost everything I care about is managed via git. That includes editor and shell configs and ~/bin -- restoring my own dev environment is so easy, I just randomly do it on different computers.

Every time I make a change worth saving and want to share it, I push it to gerrit, which means there are now two copies (one on my laptop and one "in the cloud" on my gerrit server).

Every time a change is reviewed, verified, and blessed as part of our code base, the reviewer or verifier pushes a button to submit the change, it's automatically sent up to github, github fires webhooks that automatically replicate the data down to a machine in the office, another copy on our build master (also in the office), and then, shortly after, another copy on every build slave.

Internally, files are stored via nfs or smb onto a solaris box that takes snapshots every 15m. Those snapshots are not stored externally.

The biggest part of our data, though, is made up of vm images. Big files that change a lot. Restoring them hurts, but anything that loads up IO on that box makes vmware think the NFS server isn't responding and it unmounts and remounts it (it even does this when nothing's using it -- though the NFS server itself works fine for other clients during this time).

I wouldn't mind a backup procedure there, but it'd have to not break that.

(sorry to not use your form... the further down I got, the less it applied to me)

Re: Ask HN: Help me fix your backups

#5

Post by [deleted] »

drewcrawford wrote: post #3
pwim wrote: post #2

As a software development company, all of our code is in a git repository that has a remote on a VPS. Our documents are primarily Google docs. Important docs are checked into git. Nothing we have locally that is important is not also at some remote location.

Thanks, that is great feedback. Maybe so much is web-based now that backups aren't really relevant. Is there any pain associated with restoring your dev environment? How long would it take you to get your text editor reinstalled, color scheme set back up, system preferences back, etc.?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Help me fix your backups

#6

Post by cperciva » 

  How is your data backed up?
  ...
  [X] I use Tarsnap
  ...
Where's the "I am Tarsnap" option?

Somewhat related: Are the responses to this going to be made public somewhere? I'd love to see what they look like (for obvious reasons) and was thinking just last week that maybe I should post a survey to HN and Reddit.

Re: Ask HN: Help me fix your backups

#7

Post by drewcrawford »

cperciva wrote: post #6

How is your data backed up? ... [X] I use Tarsnap ... Where's the "I am Tarsnap" option? Somewhat related: Are the responses to this going to be made public somewhere? I'd love to see what they look like (for obvious reasons) and was thinking just last week that maybe I should post a survey to HN and Reddit.

Lol. I knew it was you as soon as I saw "I use tarsnap" as the only one checked.

I love Tarsnap. I use you for a lot of very-critical-yet-small files.

My personal pain point is that I'd like to back up a few TB of data but can't afford to--it would be nice to back up an entire workstation. I'm interested in seeing if that's a sentiment that others share, or if it's just me.

Re: Ask HN: Help me fix your backups

#8

Post by cperciva »

drewcrawford wrote: post #7
cperciva wrote: post #6

How is your data backed up? ... [X] I use Tarsnap ... Where's the "I am Tarsnap" option? Somewhat related: Are the responses to this going to be made public somewhere? I'd love to see what they look like (for obvious reasons) and was thinking just last week that maybe I should post a survey to HN and Reddit.

Lol. I knew it was you as soon as I saw "I use tarsnap" as the only one checked. I love Tarsnap. I use you for a lot of very-critical-yet-small files. My personal pain point is that I'd like to back up a few TB of data but can't afford to--it would be nice to back up an entire workstation. I'm interested in seeing if that's a sentiment that others share, or if it's just me.

My personal pain point is that I'd like to back up a few TB of data but can't afford to--it would be nice to back up an entire workstation.

Why do you have a few TB of data on a workstation? What sort of work are you doing?

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