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QA /technical/2009/08/the-art-of-backup/
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Wesley Moore
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I've been meaning to write a post about backup for some time now. This morning after posting a <a href="http://popcorn.cx/blog/2009/08/i-dont-trust-the-cloud/#comment-53264">comment on Stephen's blog</a> about it I decided it was time to finish it off.
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My backup strategy has been evolving since around 2006 when I decided that my photos were not amply secure in case of disaster. My backup solution at the time was to periodically burn a copy to CD, which I kept in my house. The obvious limitation here is that if the house is destroyed, by fire for example, all my photos are lost. What got me thinking about this originally was there actually was a major fire in one of the apartments in the block that I lived in. I was away at the time so was fortunate it didn't spread to the other apartments.
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<h3>Contents</h3>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="/2009/08/the-art-of-backup/#ipod">The iPod Solution</a></li>
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<li><a href="/2009/08/the-art-of-backup/#exavault">ExaVault</a></li>
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<li><a href="/2009/08/the-art-of-backup/#s3">Amazon S3</a></li>
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<li><a href="/2009/08/the-art-of-backup/#backblaze">Backblaze</a></li>
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<li><a href="/2009/08/the-art-of-backup/#conclusion">Conclusion</a></li>
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</ul>
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* <a href="#ipod">The iPod Solution</a>
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* <a href="#exavault">ExaVault</a>
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* <a href="#s3">Amazon S3</a>
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* <a href="#backblaze">Backblaze</a>
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* <a href="#conclusion">Conclusion</a>
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<a name="ipod"></a>
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<h3>The iPod Solution</h3>
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@ -30,7 +30,7 @@ To mitigate the risk of losing photos I setup a Time Machine drive when Mac OS X
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<a name="s3"></a>
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<h3>Amazon S3</h3>
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When I started a new job a coleegue mentioned that he was using <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/">Amazon S3</a> for backup and it was really cheap. I looked into it and found that S3 offered pricing low enough that it was financially feasible to push a copy of all my photos to the service. I considered <a href="http://www.jungledisk.com/">Jungle Disk</a> but in the end didn't go with it because I wanted a single solution that I could use on my Linux VPS as well as my Mac. I ended up using <a href="http://s3sync.net/">s3sync</a>, which is basically <a href="http://www.samba.org/rsync/">rsync</a> for S3. This had the added benefit of being a drop in replacement for my ExaVault setup.
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When I started a new job a colleague mentioned that he was using <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/">Amazon S3</a> for backup and it was really cheap. I looked into it and found that S3 offered pricing low enough that it was financially feasible to push a copy of all my photos to the service. I considered <a href="http://www.jungledisk.com/">Jungle Disk</a> but in the end didn't go with it because I wanted a single solution that I could use on my Linux VPS as well as my Mac. I ended up using <a href="http://s3sync.net/">s3sync</a>, which is basically <a href="http://www.samba.org/rsync/">rsync</a> for S3. This had the added benefit of being a drop in replacement for my ExaVault setup.
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The initial upload of over 40Gb of photos to S3 took a couple of weeks I think but after that it happily ran without any drama. I also moved VPS hosts and was able to pull down configs from S3 after the old server had become inaccessible.
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@ -38,36 +38,33 @@ Whilst I had the S3 solution in place I upgraded my Mac. I bought a second drive
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<h4>S3 Problems</h4>
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After a while I noticed that s3sync was coping a few files every time it ran, even though they hadn't changed. These files had Unicode filenames. After some research I found out that <a href="http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1150.html#UnicodeSubtleties">HFS+ uses decompesed character sequences in filenames</a>. However these did not play nice with s3sync. Presumably they were stored in pre-composed format on S3 and were then seen as different when the sync was run.
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After a while I noticed that s3sync was coping a few files every time it ran, even though they hadn't changed. These files had Unicode filenames. After some research I found out that <a href="http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1150.html#UnicodeSubtleties">HFS+ uses decomposed character sequences in filenames</a>. However these did not play nice with s3sync. Presumably they were stored in pre-composed format on S3 and were then seen as different when the sync was run.
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s3sync also uses a questionable method to store the attributes of the folders that it syncs. Since S3 doesn't have a concept of folders s3sync creates a file with the name of the folder and stores its attributes (permissions, owner, etc.) in it. What this ends up meaning is that s3sync is the only tool that can perform a restore. Other tools create a file with the name of a folder then try to create files in that folder but can't because the name is already taken.
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<a name="backblaze"></a>
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<h3>Moving to Backblaze</h3>
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To save money I moved all the services I had running on my Linux VPS to my Mac at home. Since I now only had one machine that needed backing up and I didn't need Linux compatibility I had some more options. With the S3 issues I was seeing I decided to move to <a href="http://www.backblaze.com/partner/af0192">Backblaze</a><sup><abbr title="Affiliate link">$</abbr></sup>. For US$50 per year I get unlimited, versioned, encrypted storage and decent Mac support. They also have a web interface that can be handy for grabbing files from my Mac at home when I'm at work.
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To save money I moved all the services I had running on my Linux VPS to my Mac at home. Since I now only had one machine that needed backing up and I didn't need Linux compatibility I had some more options. With the S3 issues I was seeing I decided to move to <a href="http://www.backblaze.com/partner/af0192" class="affiliate">Backblaze</a>. For US$50 per year I get unlimited, versioned, encrypted storage and decent Mac support. They also have a web interface that can be handy for grabbing files from my Mac at home when I'm at work.
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The move to Backblaze took a lot longer than I had planned. First off uploading nearly 200Gb of data was always going to take a long time but it took far longer than it needed to due to a questionable default upload limit in the Backblaze application. It wasn't until after the two month or so initial upload finsihed that I discoved the setting. So advice to anyone performing an initial upload, <a href="https://www.backblaze.com/speedtest/">remove the upload limit</a>!
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The move to Backblaze took a lot longer than I had planned. First off uploading nearly 200Gb of data was always going to take a long time but it took far longer than it needed to due to a questionable default upload limit in the Backblaze application. It wasn't until after the two month or so initial upload finished that I discovered the setting. So advice to anyone performing an initial upload, <a href="https://www.backblaze.com/speedtest/">remove the upload limit</a>!
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<h4>Deleting All Data in an S3 Bucket</h4>
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An additional unexpected complexity in the move away from S3 was deleting the data in S3 after the Backblaze upload was complete. It isn't possible to just delete an S3 bucket and have all its data go with it. You have to delete all the data individually. This is where S3 as a backup service started to show its limitations. Its great if you're storing just photos or music but when you start syncing arbitrary files on a computer system you end up putting lots of little files up, some of which are quite weird. The primary example being Mac OS X Icon files, which are actually named 'Icon\r', yes that's a carriage return character in the filename. I have no idea why they are named like this but attempting to delete these files gave me all sorts of grief.
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An additional unexpected complexity in the move away from S3 was deleting the data in S3 after the Backblaze upload was complete. It isn't possible to just delete an S3 bucket and have all its data go with it. You have to delete all the data individually. This is where S3 as a backup service started to show its limitations. Its great if you're storing just photos or music but when you start syncing arbitrary files on a computer system you end up putting lots of little files up, some of which are quite weird. The primary example being Mac OS X Icon files, which are actually named '`Icon\r`', yes that's a carriage return character in the filename. I have no idea why they are named like this but attempting to delete these files gave me all sorts of grief.
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I started deleting eveything using <a href="http://s3tools.org/s3cmd">s3cmd</a> and its 'deleteall' action.
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I started deleting everything using <a href="http://s3tools.org/s3cmd">s3cmd</a> and its 'deleteall' action.
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<pre>S3CONF=/path/to/conf.yml s3cmd -s -v deleteall bucket-name
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S3CONF=/path/to/conf.yml s3cmd -s -v deleteall bucket-name
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-v : verbose - show files
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-s : SSL
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</pre>
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This ran for a couple of days before I noticed it had got stuck in an infinite loop. It was deleting the same files over and over again. It was here that I had to step in and start deleting stuff interactively. This is when I found the awkward Icon files. I tried several S3 clients for the Mac. <a href="http://cyberduck.ch/">Cyberduck</a> ended up being the only one capable of removing them.
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<ul>
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<li><a href="http://s3hub.com/">S3 Hub</a> could see but not delete</li>
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<li><a href="http://people.no-distance.net/ol/software/s3/">S3 Browser</a> couldn't delete</li>
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<li>s3cmd looked like it deleted but didn't</li>
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</ul>
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* <a href="http://s3hub.com/">S3 Hub</a> could see but not delete
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* <a href="http://people.no-distance.net/ol/software/s3/">S3 Browser</a> couldn't delete
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* s3cmd looked like it deleted but didn't
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Eventually I did get everything deleted but it seemed a lot harder than it should have been.
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