Some duplicati and other backup questions

[jgs2n]

I have some duplicati questions as I migrate from crashplan.

 

1.  I  see that some people use an ftp plugin with duplicati.  What is the reason to use an ftp plugin on unraid?  I just pointed the folder path in  client duplicati install to unraid local ip\disk\folder.  Is there a downside to this?

2.  What file transfer speeds can one expect?  For example, how long should it take to backup and  recover 1 terabyte of data over gigabit lan?  Is network performance or write speed the bottleneck for speed?

3.  I assume that one only needs the duplicati docker if backing up the unraid server to the cloud.  What cloud services have people used?

4. Finally, anyone find any other good options other than duplicati for backing up a bunch of windows machines to unraid?  Does anyone just use windows backup?

 

Thanks for the help

[Ambrotos]

1. Support for using network shares as "pseudo-local drive" backup targets seems to be better in OSX than in Windows. Since Duplicati doesn't officially support the use of SMB-based backup destinations, I chose to use FTP. I use the plugin instead of using the stock unRAID FTP server because I wanted finer control over FTP user accounts. I'm not aware of any specific downsides of doing it the way you did; if it's working for you then by all means carry on.

2. This is likely to depend a lot on your specific setup. Personally, I have a 10Gbps LAN, so my bottleneck is definitely the array. Assuming you're probably running a 1Gbps LAN, newer NAS drives like the Iron Wolfs and WD Reds I've seen write as fast as ~175MB/s at the edge of the platter, so it's possible the network is your bottleneck. This all assumes of course that your Duplicati client PC can read off its local drive, split the data into blocks, and encrypt it all fast enough to saturate your LAN/array. There are guides out there on optimizing Duplicati backup performance from a client configuration perspective, but increasing the volume size and reducing the compression level are good first steps for local backups if you feel like you're not getting the expected transfer rates.

3. Correct. I am using Backblaze B2. I've found it to be the cheapest per GB of the big cloud storage providers Duplicati supports (e.g. Dropbox, Microsoft Azure, Amazon S3, Google Drive, etc.)

4. Based on my research from back when the CrashPlan announcement was made public I chose to go the Duplicati route. I've set it up on several different systems for friends and family with good success. There may be new/better options out there, but I haven't really gone looking for alternatives. Honestly, I like this setup better than what I had set up with CrashPlan, and it's cheaper per month to boot!

 

Cheers,

 

-A