Re: [Bacula-users] Using Bittorrent as Backup Technology

Thanks to both of you for your thoughts. I am actually looking for anyone who has tried it or someone who has thought about trying it and dropped the idea.

I understand 10 instances is very small - but I am not contemplating huge files either. Is the transfer latency something like filesize/number of nodes?

Bacula can dump a daily differential and Bittorrent can take it from there. Databases will be more problematic.

DRBD assumes, atleast that's what Google says, stable, decent bandwidth. My design takes network cutting out on a daily basis into account. We are talking the US postal service kind of a backup. It should work under adverse situations.

I also want to be able to plug another unit in and have it start backing up without any twiddling. I have been there on the rsync front and it is reliable and simple. I just think if a cleaning person bumps the power cord and then plugs it back in (at night) that the machine should right itself. I know it can be done with scripts and rsync. Why invent and maintain something when p2p apps have solved the problem already?

For some reason, I still think Bittorrent could be a winner in the set it and forget it backup arena. Technically, this is not really a backup, it is actually backing up a backup. A poor man's disaster planning.

To be clear, here is the amount of work I am willing to do with this technology:

a. Get the hardware and connection installed

b. Configure encrypted transfers among a limited number of nodes

c. Configure the master directories which needs to be backed up for 3x redundancy

THAT'S IT - any more work is getting into fiddling.

Mehma

===

On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 1:25 AM, Wolfgang Denk <wd AT denx DOT de> wrote:

Dear mehma sarja,

In message <ec5d34681002061636p308947abre20a0b38874549c0 AT mail.gmail DOT com> you wrote:
>
> PROBLEM
> I am trying to solve off-site, on-disk backup problem in the Bay Area which
> is prone to earthquakes.
>
> QUESTION
> Is anyone out there using bittorrent as a backup tool?

Hm... have you ever looked into DRBD instead?

Bittorrent has not been designed for what you want to use it.
DRBD has. I am aware that you can use many tools for things they have
not specifically designed for, but I also believe that in most cases
the tools that have been designed for a specific purpose are most
efficient.

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

--
DENX Software Engineering GmbH, MD: Wolfgang Denk & Detlev Zundel
HRB 165235 Munich, Office: Kirchenstr.5, D-82194 Groebenzell, Germany
Phone: (+49)-8142-66989-10 Fax: (+49)-8142-66989-80 Email: wd AT denx DOT de
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