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CrashPlan Alternatives
I've been using CrashPlan since 2014 to back up my ReadyNAS (about 9 TBytes used out of 20 TByte capacity). It's been great. Unlimited, continuous, encrypted, versioning backups running on the Read...
Thanks to all those who replied.
Sadly, from these responses and my other inquiries, it seems that CrashPlan, even at twice the old price, is still the only viable solution for my case. Everything else either--and there are lots of other options--doesn't run under Linux or has a monthly cost for my use case that is an order of magnitude or more higher than even CrashPlan Pro.
The closest, widely-discussed alternative is BackBlaze. Unfortunately, their personal plan which is unlimited, inexpensive, and seems generally good, does not run under Linux. They do have a well-regarded B2 Cloud Storage plan which has multiple clients which might run om ReadyNAS, but it has a metered cost that would be much more expensive than CrashPlan Pro. The implication of discussions by the Backblaze CEO is that they have no plans to change either.
So when my CrashPlan Home plan expires at the end of the year, I plan to transition to CrashPlan Pro/SMB.
But if somebody comes up with something better (ideally before then!), please do respond here.
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.
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?
- No issues with the install. I have setup a Cron to run the sync process every evening. It checks the local files with the cloud and deletes or uploads as appropriate. B2 supports versions too so it keeps the deleted files as per your settings.
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.
- At half a cent per GB per month plus 10gb free it made sense for me. I only have 160gb to backup. It costs me 75cents a month. Can't beat that anywhere.
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