I’m in the process of setting up backups for my home server, and I feel like I’m swimming upstream. It makes me think I’m just taking the wrong approach.
I’m on a shoestring budget at the moment, so I won’t really be able to implement a 3-2-1 strategy just yet. I figure the most bang for my buck right now is to set up off-site backups to a cloud provider. I first decided to do a full-system backup in the hopes I could just restore it and immediately be up and running again. I’ve seen a lot of comments saying this is the wrong approach, although I haven’t seen anyone outline exactly why.
I then decided I would instead cherry-pick my backup locations instead. Then I started reading about backing up databases, and it seems you can’t just back up the data directory (or file in the case of SQLite) and call it good. You need to dump them first and backup the dumps.
So, now I’m configuring a docker-db-backup container to back each one of them up, finding database containers and SQLite databases and configuring a backup job for each one. Then, I hope to drop all of those dumps into a single location and back that up to the cloud. This means that, if I need to rebuild, I’ll have to restore the containers’ volumes, restore the backups, bring up new containers, and then restore each container’s backup into the new database. It’s pretty far from my initial hope of being able to restore all the files and start using the newly restored system.
Am I going down the wrong path here, or is this just the best way to do it?
Some things you should determine first:
Plug these numbers into cost calculators for whatever cloud service you’re hoping to use, because this is honestly not going to be the cheapest route to store off-site if there are ingress charges like with S3.
I know Cloudflare’s R2 service doesn’t charge for ingress or egress (for now), but you might be able to find something even cheaper if you’re only backing up certain types of data that can be easily compressed.
I’d also investigate cheap ways to maybe just store an off-site drive with your data: office/work, family house, friends house…etc. Storage devices are way cheaper than monthly cloud costs.
Had considered a device with some storage at a family member’s house, but then I’d have to maintain that, fix it if it goes down, replace it if it breaks, etc. I think I’d prefer a small monthly fee for now, even if it may work out more expensive in the long run.
Good call on the cost calculation. I’ll take another look at those factors…
There’s also the option of just leaving an offline disk at someone’s and visiting them regularly to update the backup.
Having an entirely offline copy also protects you/mitigates against a few additional hazards.