Online backup to S3 for the Mac

Post by statictype » Tue, Mar 09, 2010, 6:34 AM UTC

sreitshamer wrote: post #40

cperciva wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arq packs small files (under 64k) together into "packs"... Ok, so if you have lots of 64 kB files they're all PUT separately, using 15625 PUTs/GB (i.e., $0.15/GB)? I guess that's not too bad. The file format is open Nice! Good to see someone who believes in openness. (How about the source code, so that people can confirm that you're doing what the spec says?) One thing caught my eye glancing through that document, th…

Ok, so if you have lots of 64 kB files they're all PUT separately, using 15625 PUTs/GB (i.e., $0.15/GB)? I guess that's not too bad. I guess I could ask you to choose the threshold instead of picking 64k, but generally I've tried to choose reasonable defaults so that the user doesn't have to make those kinds of decisions. Good to see someone who believes in openness. (How about the source code, so that people can con…

Post by pclark » Tue, Mar 09, 2010, 10:02 AM UTC

Frazzydee wrote: post #19

Willie_Dynamite wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't figure out what 750 * 0.15 comes to?

Perhaps he is saying that the per-gig cost is not clear. It says buy now for $29, but the extra $0.15/GB/month to use S3 is hidden under "Why use S3?" (you might not expect costs to be there) We both know what S3 is, and know that they charge per gig. But the market of people who want online backups for their macs don't necessarily know this.

Post by sreitshamer » Tue, Mar 09, 2010, 10:47 AM UTC

rshields wrote: post #39

Is there some way to make the app not suck up all the bandwidth on my teeny weeny cable modem?

Post by towndrunk » Tue, Mar 09, 2010, 1:00 PM UTC

sreitshamer wrote: post #28

cperciva wrote: post #26

As the author of Tarsnap, I'm a bit biased, so I'm going to refrain from comparing the two; but I have one question for the author: Aren't S3 per-request fees a problem? One of the reasons I have all Tarsnap data go through the Tarsnap server is to allow me to "bundle" blocks together and amortize per-PUT costs.

The per-request fees ($.01 per 1000 PUTs and $.01 per 10,000 GETs) aren't a problem for 2 reasons: 1) Arq packs small files (under 64k) together into "packs", a bit like git does. So instead of thousands of PUTs of tiny files (which would also be very slow) it does fewer larger PUTs. 2) Arq caches indexes of those pack files locally, and caches the list of larger S3 objects as well. So it doesn't have to do a GET to…

Post by DavidSJ » Tue, Mar 09, 2010, 2:12 PM UTC

sreitshamer wrote: post #46

statictype wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Well, you could actually write your own code to read the files, since the format is open. I think the parent's point was not vendor lock-in but rather, that publishing the source code to your particular implementation would lend more credibility to it since anyone can inspect it and verify that it does what it says it does.

Right, but with Arq, unlike most online backup offerings, you have direct access to the files being stored online (they're in your S3 account). So you can verify that Arq says what it does because you can look at the results.