CrashPlan Alternatives

Your idea of backing up my NAS from Windows client got me thinking.

I've been testing CloudBerry Desktop with BackBlaze B2 storage. So far it's working really well. It does block level backups (I assume this is dedupe). B2 storage is pretty cheap as well. $0.005/GB/month. I read that CloudBerry only let's you add one network share but so far that does not seem to be the case. Either way, I can point it at \\readynas\c and configure what I want to backup under that.

I might convert my CP plan to Small Business just because I can, and see how things go to compare.

So CloudBerry is ok, but unfortunately they have a data protection cap of 1TB. WTF?

Arq is another alternative that can connect to many cloud services and doesn't have such restrictions.

Stephen, is there any specific reason for your desire to backup your NAS from a Windows (or other) PC versus software installed right on the NAS itself? I'm trying to think of the pros and cons but not coming up with much other than resource utilization.

Im in the same boat. And I can't answer for the OP but for me, I don't want to run a PC constantly just so the backup software will connect to my NAS and push. My NAS currently just sits there in the background and uplaods to Crashplan. My daughters all have shared drived on their laptop that backup to the NAS and I know it gets pushed near real time whether I have my PC on or not.

People like us are really between the rock and a hard place. Because the cost does seem wuite a jump for us home users and I'm not convinced Crashplan Pro/Business will continue to work on my NAS.

I'm still looking but it's not looking good.

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oshae wrote:

 

Stephen, is there any specific reason for your desire to backup your NAS from a Windows (or other) PC versus software installed right on the NAS itself? I'm trying to think of the pros and cons but not coming up with much other than resource utilization.

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I think it's more robust, and many applications are better supported on PCs anyway.  Another aspect is that it simplifies equipment upgrades in the future.

In general, running a lot of applications on the NAS tends to make firmware updates fragile (and can hurt storage performance by tieing up resources). 

Enterprises separate NAS from application servers, and I am aiming to do the same.  My ideal server would be a small form factor PC with 10 gigabit ethernet.

This is a good point that dawned on me after my post lol. I manage backups for a fairly large organization, including backing up shares on multiple NetApp storage clusters. There is definitely no "backup agent" that gets installed on these. Instead we use a proxy machine (Windows Server).

For anyone curious, I migrated my Home plan to Small Business. I only had a few days plus the 60 to go anyway. The migration went suprisingly well and all my clients were upgraded, including my Pro 6 (running R4 firmware). I decided I may as well take advantage of CrashPlan and their deep discount on Small Business. In my particular case I was able to continue backing up everything I was before for about the same amount of money. However, I fully plan on spending the next year figuring out a longer term solution (before the 75% discount is up obviously).

Possible solutions are:

1) Continue as is and just reduce how many machines I am backing up (a few of them were family members, they may just have to accept they must take care of this on their own now with something like Backblaze).

2) Stay on CrashPlan Small Business and use my Windows desktop or server to backup the mounted NAS volume to reduce licensed machines.

3) Use an app like CloudBerry Backup or Arq Backup with Backblaze B2 as the storage. $0.005/GB/month is pretty damn cheap. At some point that cost is going to exceed the value of the CrashPlan Home plan. But given I was spending $25CAD/month (family plan) and was storing about 3TB of data I figure up to 5TB on B2 is worth it.

I understand there are people with much more to backup than this. This is just my personal take on my own situation.

On the topic of B2, one interesting thing I've been thinking about doing is using it as an archive. I can make room on my NAS by moving files I don't really need access to into a B2 bucket. They are still readily available to download if I really needed them. I realize this is not backup, but Backblaze must have multiple layers of redundancy.

In my eyes it's a way to expand my nearline NAS storage, with something not quite as available/"cool".

I finally opted for using RCLONE with B2.  I get RCLONE to encrypt my data before sending it as the B2 cloud is not encrypted.

Only issues I came into are:

Readynas Duo V2 has limited RAM so needed to increase my Swap file to accomodate.  All working well now.

Transactions - B2 transactions are higher on new version of Rclone to make it perform quicker.  I am running at 1350 transactions a day for a 160Gb backup (you get more than this free per day)

Bye Bye Crashplan

I briefly looked into RClone, no issues installing it?

Can you set up schedule style backups like typical backup tools?

Thanks for this. But why B2? I don't like the idea of getting charged dynamically. What I liked about CP was that is was unlimited. I have 3T of data but it doesn't grow consistantly.