Move local backup to another server

[jayonrails]

Hi,

I have created a local backup on my server using the filesystem backup provider. Please see the docs here: https://docs.cloudron.io/backu…

The backup is created using rsync, the idea behind is that it now backs up all the big things (Nextcloud, 160 GB) and later I can run it again and it just backup ups the small changes like some e-mails I got in between.

What would be the best method to move these backups to a new server and what do I need to do to have the integrity of the files guaranteed? I think when using rsync, all backups have to be moved.

I am happy to get some tipps from you!

Best
Jay

[girish]

@jayonrails You can just rsync the timestamped directories. The "snapshot" directory need not be rsynced.

But why not just backup remotely to start with ?

[michaelpope]

@jayonrails Hey there,

In general, the easiest thing to do is to do a remote backup by deafult, as girish said. If you aren't very familiar with Linux servers, it is probably best to stick with this. In terms of integrity... I don't think rsync provides any guarantees there. You might have to write something on your own. For prepping against an unlikely hack or malware, your best bet is to stick it on a backup storage provider that does snapshotting, like rsync.net (unlikely to happen though, as Cloudron takes security pretty seriously).

However, if you need a local backup in addition to a remote backup, the easiest thing to probably do is to use Cloudron Backup in rsync mode to rsync to disk, and then to use restic to backup that directory to a backup storage service. Note that it is very important that the disk you rsync to is NOT the same one Cloudron is running on. If you are using a VPS provider, put it on one of their 'block storage' disks, or something like that.

Having the local backup -> remote backup workflow helps in the sense that it's a lot quicker to do a backup locally than it is remotely, and restic packs those backups remotely really efficiently (and reasonably quickly too).

This does require some knowledge on crontabs and scripting though. There are some forum posts on the general process. Here's one, though they backup to one drive:

https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/6928/tutorial-remote-backup-of-local-cloudron-backup-snapshots-with-restic-rclone?_=1676593563170

What I've done personally is used a CLI tool called autorestic to help manage the backups. Then I've written some short shells scripts that can do a restore, list backups, and mount backups as a drive (a feature of restic). This makes it easy for me to go through my backup's files, even though they are remote and encrypted, which is nice.

You do take on a lot more responsibility doing it this way though, as you are responsible for the scripts - you are on your own to make sure things work. So best of luck to you, if you choose to do things this way :).

[necrevistonnezr]

@michaelpope said in Move local backup to another server:

@jayonrails Hey there,

This does require some knowledge on crontabs and scripting though. There are some forum posts on the general process. Here's one, though they backup to one drive:

https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/6928/tutorial-remote-backup-of-local-cloudron-backup-snapshots-with-restic-rclone?_=1676593563170

Author of this post here: It‘s not specific to Onedrive at all - it‘s just the provider I chose when setting up the rclone repo. Rclone supports more or less all relevant storage providers currently

Also interesting: Wrappers and GUIs built on top of restic: https://forum.restic.net/t/tools-on-top-of-restic/4956/

[girish]

For backup integrity, we are working on this - https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/8269/what-s-coming-in-7-4 . What we mean by integrity is: currently, Cloudron lacks a way to figure if the backup is incomplete or if the files have been tampered (not just for security, but accidentally or bit rotting). Idea is to keep track of what has been backed up - essentially a signed digest file.

[girish]

Fixed in 7.5.1