Remote Backup to Cloud Storage/Amazon S3

[kd55]

I am looking at options that can be used for remote backup into cloud. Let me know what you use for this and how to set it up.

I am only looking at Amazon S3, they seem to be the only trustworthy online option that has grown huge.

I would like compression, de-duplication (its mail , and encryption also if available.

Thanks...

KD

[phoenix]

Do a search of the wiki for 'backup', you'll find plenty of articles there. This has also been covered in the forums a search will also find some threads on backup procedures.

[rsorensen]

We have standardized on using SecoBackup across our enterprise. We use it to backup Zimbra to the cloud (Amazon S3). It has GUI , but also has command line...

Email compresses really well, also, de-duplication is a must. Thats why we chose SecoBackup.

They dont charge for software, so its easy to get started. You can pay for support if you need. We have not needed to use it, just works for us.

Remote Backup to Amazon S3 - PC, Servers & MySQL - SecoBackup, S3SQL

btw, we use it to back up our web sites and databases also.

[kd55]

Ok. I finally got around to looking at this again. I got secobackup instlled on my machine and setup a couple of my directories for backup to amazon s3. Now, when new files are written to those directories, they automatically go to S3 in the background (my guess is there is some sort of secobackup background that automatically does this).

my question now is how do I zimbra to be backed up? I should manually copy the files into one of the directories that secobackup is backing up?

what is the best practice in backing up zimbra to a directory? on a schedule?

KD

[Klug]

I know S3 works quite well, lots of people are very happy with it.

However, outages happened in the past and data were lost.

Do you really think S3 is reliable enough to host production backups ?

[kd55]

Amazon's availability is impeccable. The media loves to pick on them when they have a downtime, but thats because media fails to get it. We in the business on IT know that the 12 hour downtime total over 1 year that Amazon's S3 service suffers is NIRVANA. Too many things go wrong - scheduled and unplanned downtime of various sorts.

Sadly, secobackup to Amazon S3 will now give better availability IMHO than my own production servers hosting zimbra. sigh. I can live with that though I guess ;-)

One good article written on this subject -
"The truth is that we cannot do it better than Amazon."
Reaching for the Sky Through The Compute Clouds - ReadWriteWeb

Now think of the time and hassle it takes for you to get back a backup tape from Iron Mountain. Now visualize downloading a back up in 5 minutes with a single click

It IS nirvana.

[rsorensen]

Interesting you mention backup to tape. Boy we are glad that we stopped using tape and jumped to the cloud. With tape we could never be sure that our tapes are a) working b) available when you need them c) secure

I remember this one time when one of my buddies got a call from his boss and he broke into a sweat has he tried to restore from backup!

With backup to the cloud I dont have to worry. Testing an offsite backup is trivial - just click on the file or download it using command line scripts.

We are actually using secobackup to setup a standby site on EC2 for testing. Here's a neat setup we use

Local DB on RHEL -- secobackup, daily backup --> Amazon S3
|
daily secobackup restore
|
V
EC2

Now we will end up with a test and reporting standy on EC2 that can be refreshed daily.

[uxbod]

Hmmm ... very interesting. I do take Klug's comments on board aswell. We currently backup to LTO4s and keep both a onsite and offsite copy. If we are unable to restore from a backup (tape) then it is us who will get it in the neck. What happens in the situation where a cloud backup supplier cannot restore a file ? I wonder what indemnity insurance they have, or what the small print says in the contract

[Klug]

My question was not about "S3 not available": 12 hours of non-availability for backup data seems really OK.

uxbod got exactly my question: if I f*ck my own backup set (that exists in two different datacentres), it's my own problem, I have to handle it.
What will happen if S3 (or any other data cloud) looses data?

Actually, it seems to me S3 is a cheap solution against "dedicated online backup solution" because of this : it's not meant to be "as sure as" a backup solution...

[bgronek]

One question not answered here: How do you set up secobackup to back up Zimbra? It seems that different sets back up the sql databases and the files. I understand that proper Zimbra backup requires that it be shut down and the files in the Zimbra folder copied / backed up.

So... How do you configure secobackup to back up Zimbra?

Many thanks for any answers!