Backup - a few issues - Enhance Control Panel

Backup - a few issues

DracoBlue

Hi, I'm wondering how to set up S3 backup. So, I'd like to ask how you have it configured? How many days do you keep backups for? Is it set to run every 24 hours or, for example, every 2 days? What method works best for you?

twest

When I used to use full daily backups at S3 I only kept 2 days of backups, to help keep costs low. Those backups are only going to be used in a last resort scenario if a server takes a shit, so it's not necessary to keep a huge number of them. The only reason I didn't keep just 1 day of backups was to add the tiniest bit of extra redundancy since a daily backups failure is somewhat common, so 2 days is good.

I've always kept 3 backups too, so the S3 backups for me were just one of em, really not necessary to overdo it in my setup when we already spend an insane amount on backups on top of backups.

Nowadays our backup strat is scaled back slightly, going with the 3-2-1 backups strat, so we have 2 daily backups stored at different locations.

Andreas

I was just thinking about a solution for backups of my backups. I thought about adding the S3 again, but my concern, would be the extra load on the server doing backups like that. One for enhance backup server (which is incremental at least), but the ones to S3 are all full backups.

The second issue, which is not huge but more of an annoyance, is I noticed when you use the S3 option, it creates extra folders in the hosting account for each backup it does. https://prnt.sc/ZDlJHW_K25ap

I wish it would remove those folders when its not needed anymore as they are all blank

xyzulu

This is how I do it: https://community.enhance.com/d/1185-enhance-backups-replication
Less load on your servers, you can still use S3 if you like.. or use Backblaze etc

adil

xyzulu

so this take increment of the Enhance backup server ?
Or just snapshot each day ?

DracoBlue

xyzulu I have a VPS server and I'm using Backblaze S3. I make backups every 24 hours and keep 4 copies. I'm wondering if I should increase or decrease this. It's a pity that Enhance doesn't have the option to select which sites to back up because some sites don't change at all, and another backup shouldn't be created for those sites.

xyzulu

You can configure kopia as you wish.... snapshots are incremental.

xyzulu

I'm proposing a different way to looking at this.. don't use Enhance S3 backups.. use Enhance backups (incremental) and then the use another tool.. ie kopia to make backups of these backups. You can choose how you like it then..

DracoBlue

xyzulu I checked and Local Block Storage will be more expensive for me than B2 Backblaze. 1TB of Local Block Storage costs $12, while Backblaze costs $6.

slimx

DracoBlue
I'm in the same boat, the backup server is costing me more than the s3. I'm on WASABI at the moment. Very happy so far. Keeping 30 days of backups!

Oldschool

ivansalloum

slimx

DracoBlue
Just a reminder, block storage while more expensive initially than B2/wasabi is more efficient because of incrementals via enhance on block storage.

I'm using both and my B2 is 4x the size of my block storage.

ivansalloum

slimx Could you please share your approach?

Isaia-Arknet_PTY_LTD

S3 or other storage options make sense for a few small websites; the moment you have sites taking 1Tb each, and you intend to back them up for a 30-day retention span, you do not need to be too brilliant to see the problem.

I have a few clients like that, and we are backing up on a server with 8 TB of storage attached, which is used 30% of it.
If S3 had been used, you would require 40+ TB of storage to accommodate backups.

As an opposite example, if you have 100 GB websites S3, it makes sense (just because it is easy to set up, not because it is cheaper)

Enhance got backups right for all of us from the start. (I personally can not ask for other options as they are not required)
When they will have more time, they will probably improve, as I can see others offering great ideas of how to improve Enhance's backup server/options.

george

Isaia-Arknet_PTY_LTD I agree 👍

josedieguez

S3 Backup without incremental, it's just not worth it.

but when/if Enhance implements incremental to S3 Destination, that would be great.

we have around 22.000 websites backing up directly to S3 (but incremental, with other control panels).

for Enhance, we use just a simple cheap dedicated server for backups, until S3 backup gets improved.

JohnB

josedieguez I don't think S3 backup was ever designed for hosts at this scale as its just not cost effective.

Way cheaper to have real backup servers and then backup those to s3. Backup servers use btrfs which you can export differental snapshots and upload to s3 or another server. See this https://community.enhance.com/d/1185-enhance-backups-replication.

Backblaze S3 is way cheaper and has equal or better reliability compared to AWS.

josedieguez

JohnB

at $5usd per TB, i find S3 way cheaper and reliable than many dedicated servers. with the amount of TB's we have on backups, we would need many dedicated servers to manage-configure-protect-update, and what i have found is that dedicated servers for backups have a degraded performance as you add more servers to back up on them. while S3 doesn't have that issue.

xyzulu

josedieguez you need to look into block storage for your dedicated servers.

josedieguez

xyzulu not sure. using around 40TB of backups right now, easy to control, no need to update, maintain, secure, etc. and backups are just growing.

xyzulu

josedieguez It will be far cheaper for you to have a dedicated Enhance backup server. Personally, I run one in my own office where all sites are backed up to. s3 is just not cost effective for anything more than "cold" single backup storage in my opinion.

josedieguez

xyzulu i do like fast backups, and fast recovery times too, wich a dedicated server will fail terrible, so no thanks.