Archive for February, 2009
Geographic backups with rsync.net
Friday, February 27th, 2009 | Technology | No Comments
My server where this site and others are hosted undergoes a routine backup every couple of days. Not much needs to be backed up but I’ve reached the point where each backup is approximately 100 MB in size. This server is hosted in the United States.
Here in South Africa, we have a monopolistic telecommunications provider named Telkom which overcharges and underdelivers basic services such as ADSL. I have to pay R 70 (Approximately USD $7 at the moment) for each gigabyte. Besides that, I have a monthly ADSL cap of 3 GB which is shared amongst 4 people in my household. Apart from stifling the development of internet-based services in South Africa (imagine YouTube having to pay $7 for every GB a user uploads or downloads to them), it also makes simple things like transferring my meagre 100 MB backups locally a little unpleasant. Telkom also hasn’t seen the need to introduce speeds over 4 Mbps. I’m sitting on 386 Kbps which suites me just fine because, if I went any faster, I might be tempted to use my bandwith cap within a day.
So I saw an advert for rsync.net which advertised rather cheap and convenient storage space. They basically offer disk space and provide ssh, ftp, rsync, webdav and *insert your protocol here* access to it. Can it be more convenient? I signed up with them on Wednesday and modified my backup system to scp all backups to their servers in Switzerland. The only issue with the sign up was the +- 12 hour wait for the system to become active. If they automated signup and I had had instant access to the space, it would have been terrific. Otherwise, everything worked first time as it should.
If you need some space for backups and you enjoy geographic safety, go with them. I’d recommend them.