Hey that's me 😂 Thanks for mentioning gickup

@JeffGeerling

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks for making it, and for your responsiveness in getting all my nit-picky issues sorted ;)

@joonasfi

2 жыл бұрын

Hey Buddy

@gautamkrishnar

2 жыл бұрын

Great job buddy

@MrWachtus

2 жыл бұрын

@@joonasfi Hi Joonas 👋

@MrWachtus

2 жыл бұрын

@@gautamkrishnar thanks 😄

That smile on your face after the nail gun - priceless!

@DarrylAdams

2 жыл бұрын

No. That was Redshirt Jeff. Normal Jeff is a totally different person.

Don't forget to make sure to have an offline backup to prevent data loss if you get hacked

@ohokcool

26 күн бұрын

With that in mind a good 3 step backup would be: Original data + 3 copies: 1. Local sync to NAS 2. Local offline to external hard drive 3. Remote sync to “the cloud”

"If my entire network rack got Thanos snapped... I'd be okay" Don't lie Jeff, we know you'd be sad

@JeffGeerling

2 жыл бұрын

This is true. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears goes into a nice network rack.

@mtargetproduction

2 жыл бұрын

@@JeffGeerling the way you talk about some of the pis in that rack, there is some definite emotional investment.

@JeffGeerling

2 жыл бұрын

​@@mtargetproduction They say cattle, not pets... but sometimes it's nice to give your servers a little TLC.

"You can almost always do better than you are right now." This is applied to pretty much everything.

OMG I need one of those "The Cloud is someone else's computer" shirts!😀👋

@JeffGeerling

2 жыл бұрын

I can't even remember where I got mine! ☁️

The most important and most useful video you have ever made. Backups are absolutely vital.

@JeffGeerling

2 жыл бұрын

I've been saved by good backups a few more times than I'd like to admit!

@chuckcrizer

2 жыл бұрын

@@JeffGeerling I'm a Senior Network Engineer and to me, backups are a religious activity! Sadly, they are also the last thing management wants to spend time and money on.

@Wordsnwood

2 жыл бұрын

@@JeffGeerling Psst, Jeff, I suggest you add the "kissy lips" emoji to your blocked words list in YT studio -- it will cut all these porn comments that are popping into comments these days.

@JeffGeerling

2 жыл бұрын

@@Wordsnwood Ugh... will do.

@JeffGeerling

2 жыл бұрын

@@chuckcrizer The last thing they spend time and money on, then the first thing they'll yell at you about when poop hits the fan!

I have a friend who says the following: You don't want a Backup Plan. You want a Restore Plan with Backup as but the first step. And if it has not been tested, you don't have a plan.

@SeanFisher

Жыл бұрын

New video idea: How to Properly Test your Restore Plan.

You won me when you said “the cloud is just someone’s else computer.” Great video. And yeah, I have a NAS, but gotta make an offsite backup fast

@kamikazilucas

4 күн бұрын

implying cloud servers are just 1 computer and not tons of computers backed up

You really nailed your backup!

@JeffGeerling

2 жыл бұрын

I understood that reference!

You missed the most important part of this: testing your backups! If you don't try to restore from your backups (e.g. the stuff in Glacier) until after you have a disaster, you may be in for serious pain when you discover the backups weren't working like you thought they were. Another issue is versioning data - what happens when your data gets cryptolocked, and you automated systems back up the cryptolocked files on top of your good backups? ZFS is great for this... :)

@JeffGeerling

2 жыл бұрын

I mentioned the testing-and how I don't do it right now, heh ;) In terms of cryptolockers, a good solution is an offline backup-which I handily get for at least some of my data via AWS Glacier, since it puts the files in cold storage after a day or two.

@danielsmullen3223

2 жыл бұрын

@@JeffGeerling Testing is critical! See my other comment -- especially with "unlimited" cloud storage providers, sometimes the time you have to recover your backups before the provider's retention policy kicks in and deletes the "old" backups isn't enough time for you to actually recover everything. You must be able to test the backup and recovery strategy so that a back of the envelope calculation can be made about whether it's actually feasible to get back up and running again (let alone within the time frame needed to keep your affairs in order).

@deusexaethera

2 жыл бұрын

No, the most important part is not testing the backups, but just having the backups at all. If you have multiple backups performed using different software then the need to test each of them is diminished.

@perwestermark8920

2 жыл бұрын

Even backup testing can fail. I once relied on Windows Backup for some data. I did test I could restore files. No issue there. I did not test if I could restore the full disk. Oops. When the ssd failed, I learned the hard way that Microsoft forgot to keep track of deleted files. So it restored the union of all previous backups. When it had multiple copies of the same file, I got the newest. But how well do program version 3.16 like to find files from version 2.9, 2.7, 2.2, 1.14 - files that the installer had removed when updating? It was pure chaos and a totally unusable backup.

@ThylineTheGay

2 жыл бұрын

@@JeffGeerling red shirt Jeff is always an option

Excellent tips on backups, recovery and testing in current ransomware age...I would add encryption to sensitive data and don't forget backing up your private keys!

@JeffGeerling

2 жыл бұрын

Good points-in my repo, I do have a note to explain encryption a bit more. I also need to work on a couple parts of my backup plan where things _aren't_ yet encrypted...

@autohmae

2 жыл бұрын

I've been using restic. What do you use ?

@MfBPhone

2 жыл бұрын

One extra thing with ransomware, I would advise to try and have one of the 3 copies also be a offline backup (or another way protected against unwanted encryption). You don't want to sync the encryption to all your copies.

@charleshines1553

2 жыл бұрын

To protect from ransomware, keep one copy almost never connected to the PC in any way. Ransomware can't hurt it if it can't find it. If you find yourself to be the victim of ransomware, make sure other computers are not affected also. I would also keep a USB stick some place that I can boot from and install a clean copy of Windows. That would also give you a chance to erase all partitions from a drive (it doesn't wipe them but it should kill the ransomware).

@autohmae

2 жыл бұрын

@@charleshines1553 yeah, best to have a 'write-only backup' service somewhere which allows uploading, but only deletes old backups with a specify number of days.

Red shirt Jeff is definitely the most safety conscious agent of chaos I've come across.

Very well explained. After losing a bunch of photos years ago, I’ve learned my lesson. Everything in the house get backed up to a raid redundant NAS, then multiple times a day rsync to an external drive and the whole things is backed up to backblaze.

@timeTegus

2 жыл бұрын

But what if a Virus encrypts your data and your automation tool copys it ontop of the good one on the other drive

This is so true. I have one 10TB HDD that holds everything for the videos I make. A couple months ago, the folder holding hundreds of raw files that hadn't been used yet vanished. Two days and $100 for a copy of Disk Drill later, I got it back. I need to implement a proper backup that involves more than just dragging and dropping folders when I remember to, and this video reminded me of why.

For stuff like photos that you really care about, another extra backup could be a collection of archive grade blu rays, they're not that expensive when you factor in how long they last compared to HDDs or SSDs, as long as you store them properly. Just an extra level of redundancy that I see suitable for personal family photos and things of that great importance that aren't as heavy as videos.

@defipunk

Жыл бұрын

And a bank safe deposit box is < 100 bucks around here. Also a good place for a lot of non-digital documents in case of a fire or similar at home

@vijfsnippervijf

8 ай бұрын

Or maybe even a paper photo book! They are also lots of fun to show to family and friends!

I once ran email for a 40,000 user email system (120,000 aliases), we had 9 copies of Exchange data and 5 of all the various other systems configs. And even then we lost some mailboxes due to VERY specific failure modes. You can’t have too many backups. Side note: I hate email.

@KDFOXSCI

2 жыл бұрын

Email is a pain in the …

Back in R&D in the 90s, one of the director would bring a physical tape backup of the source code offsite on top of the onsite tape backups. Then one day the senior software engineers responsible for maintaining scripts for the backups realised that the backups were not working. They never quite test the restoration part.

I missed the bit where you explained how your backup versioning worked. As in - when you discover that you deleted a crucial file a fortnight ago and now need it back. One other important point is that backups must be automatic. Backups which involve plugging a removable drive as and when you remember will very quickly cease to happen.

@papersnowman

2 жыл бұрын

Thus, so much! Good backups should be more than just a synchronized copy of data

@_Miner

2 жыл бұрын

Not to forget about encryption, keys, passwords etc.. documenting what software and tools you used to backup that data, having backups of those too, and locations. Documentation can be just as critical as the data in some circumstances. So so much goes into a full backup and DR solution well at least for enterprise. EDIT: Immutable / offline backups are a must now for cryptolockers, ransomeware etc.. who can actively seek out to destroy all backups, so having them offsite but online (even if in the cloud) might not be enough.

@Rem1xDave

2 жыл бұрын

Time Machine is handling most of his versioning needs.

I need to send this video to all my friends. My backup plan right now is: 1a) Data on my Mac, 1b) Data on NAS, 2a) Mac Data on a TimeMachine disk (separate from the NAS), 2b) NAS backs up internally to Dropbox, 3a) Mac backs up to Backblaze, 3b) NAS also backs up to Backblaze by virtue of it being an iSCSI drive on my Mac. I also pay for iCloud, so Images, app backups, etc. exist in there as well. This means I pay for three cloud storage providers, but when my good friends had their house broken into and their Mac AND TimeMachine drive stolen, I went a little overkill.

very well articulated- in a short concise way!!! and for most, just going through this and thinking about WHAT you have and WHERE it's at - will be a great first step!

@JeffGeerling

2 жыл бұрын

Sometimes you see something like this and you're just like "oh... I forgot I don't even have a backup of XYZ at all!" And that's a good reason I finally decided to post this video before I felt like I had a 'perfect' system in place :)

This is very good advice. I used to manage disaster recovery for a bank. When I took over, the first test we ran where the previous guy was handing over to me, went well but the tests only tested they could carry on the next day. I did some more digging and much to the disgust of the guy I took over from I reported it as a total failure. I'd discovered that we'd not be able to process weekend, month end and year end. We had on-site backups off all that data but nothing off-site so make sure that all your important data goes to all 3 backups.

Im pretty happy with my solution. - PC's using Active Backup for Bussiness -> Synology NAS - Servers using Proxmox Backup Server -> Synology NAS - Synology NAS -> external HDD - Synology NAS -> Synology C2 Cloud So I always got 3 copies

@JeffGeerling

2 жыл бұрын

NASes can be extremely useful. Nice to have them as a go-between for important data too.

_Of course_ there's an Ansible playbook in your backup plan. That actually serves as a very useful base for me! 😄

Re: router backups. Having recently restored my pfSense box from backup after catastrophic failure, I can attest that their backup configuration mechanism is pretty amazing.

I'm a restic user and loving it so far. I have a on-going project for managing restic backups across several servers (VMs in my case) but haven't gotten it done yet... This might be the push I needed to do so haha Great video!

Great video. Something you might consider in these days of gigabit internet access is having your backup NAS at the house of a family member or good friend. You back up to them and they back up to you.

@JeffGeerling

2 жыл бұрын

Someday, when I get more than 35 mbps of bandwidth... ;)

@QuentinStephens

2 жыл бұрын

@@JeffGeerling (Old fart alert!) I remember when LANs ran at 5 Mbps. Still, 35 Mbps is sufficient to do a full 6 Tb backup in 2 days without any compression. And after your first full backup you'd only be doing incremental or differential backups. Then do a full backup when you go on holiday.

@omaryc

Жыл бұрын

@@QuentinStephens Can always backup locally before moving offsite

Excellent video. An added bonus of two local nas boxes that sync is, that you don't have to waste disk space on raid. If a drive dies, no worries, it's still running on the other box. A quick dns hostname adjustment and your family are back to watching movies on the secondary nas while you mess around with the primary one. If lightning takes out both nas boxes at the same time, it's time to restore from the cloud.

Glad to see you added the 'recovery' part. I'm over support for retail software and we have customers who assume their backup is working, but have never checked and never tired to restore the data (several have endured the sad update that their data is gone.). Both steps are very important parts of any backup plan.

Another great video Jeff. I find myself mostly watching your Raspberry Pi videos but it's interesting to see how others approach backups. One approach is not specifically better than another as multiple parameters need to be considered (e.g. cost vs. benefit, complexity, maintainability, Recovery Point Objective, Recovery Time Objective, and many others) but, as you stated, it is most important that you actually have a backup and a strategy to do so. At my work we use a backup strategy consisting of 4 levels with each succeeding level more distant from the working copy. L0 - Local device copy and backups. L1 - SAN, NAS, or DAS backup. These also serve as a data aggregator. L2 - Rotating backup of L1 (e.g. external HD/SSD/Tapes). One set is ALWAYS offline. L3 - Offsite or Cloud backup of L1 and/or L2. Other non-backup technologies to consider are RAID, snapshots, and network distributed file systems (for Linux GlusterFS and CethFS come to mind) for additional redundancy. If your data is your source of income, strongly consider having a Disaster Recovery Plan and Business Continuity Plan in place.

Great Content! As always. Look forward to the next video!

The nail through the hard drive WAS cool!

I can couch to this, I lost a year's worth of data this week, BUT I was able to keep most of it, because I had an external archive drive disconnected from my computer, and in the cloud. Was a pain to transfer and lose the data not backed, but at least I still had my import stuff, like photos and such

@JeffGeerling

2 жыл бұрын

Better a pain and still having the data than losing the data, for sure!

@CocoaEm

2 жыл бұрын

@@JeffGeerling accidentally formatted the wrong drive. All the data survived though. Likely it was the largely unimportant stuff.

@deusexaethera

2 жыл бұрын

vouch, not couch.

@CreateTeen

2 жыл бұрын

@@deusexaethera yes but I'm still sitting here, working or recovering data (remaking files and redownloading)

@darrenvail8726

2 жыл бұрын

@@CreateTeen I'll couch for that!

And you should have a copy-on-write backup-target. Otherwise you could loose important files when they get overwritten or accidential deleted and your backup-plan synchronises it to all of your 3 backup-targets.

@perwestermark8920

2 жыл бұрын

I think this is the most misunderstood part, followed by thinking RAID is backup. It's too easy to overwrite something accidentally. And the better "backup" aka mirroring solution, the quicker that overwrite gets mirrored to the secondary storage pools.

This helped me figure out the last piece to my data recovery puzzle. I needed offsite disaster recovery and rclone to aws glacier seems like it'll fit the bill. Thanks, great video!

@likilike501

2 жыл бұрын

True. I'm building my own NAS right now and i plan to store HUGE media library and this is exactly something i would need. I did not had an idea that sollution like this exists. Backing up relativelly small stuff like documents or pictures is a piece of cake and cheap(of course it depends what you do) but backing up multiple TB of data is kinda pain in the ass and definitelly not cheap.

BackBlaze will mail you drives with all your data if an emergency happens. This video is really good at bringing up the reality of loss to people and how to manage it without being overwhelmed.

Love these types of videos 👍🏻

Beautiful advice and very timely! Thanks Jeff. 👍😀

I first watched this video the day after it was published. I struck me, that I had spent the last week documenting the process and drafting a project plan for my employer's clients Business Continuity Plans (BCP) and Disaster Recovery Plans (DRP). Not once before watching this video, had I been prompted to think whether I was adequate to meet my needs (no it doesn't) or even check if my backup software, which is the Open-Source product called URBackup, was working (and no it hadn't worked for over 2 months. Given I already fit into the category of someone who has lost data, you'd think I have it all sorted. But I didn't - Thanks for wakeup call Jeff!

Thanks for this. Backups have saved me at countless times over the last 4 decades, even from myself.

Another really useful and timely video. We just had our Synology NAS say it could not access the data on the 24 TB of drives. Luckily we got it working, and I did have a local hard drive backup. But, I now need to move the offsite solution in case of the apocalypse up the priority list. I was thinking about using Synology's backup solution, but it is kind of expensive. So I am leaning toward Glacier and your video is very timely. Hopefully, I never need to restore, but if the house burns down we are in trouble with the current setup

Great content, as always! Thanks

My first experience with data loss was when my Google Nexus 5 got stolen and I lost a year's worth of photos and videos of my friends and family. Currently I just backup all the photos to Google photos and important documents to Google Drive but thanks for reminding me Jeff, I really need to have a NAS or secondary backup other than Google's cloud for all my important data.

@JeffGeerling

2 жыл бұрын

`rclone` also works with Google Drive too, so just getting a NAS of some form and having a script use rclone to back up the entire drive should get you covered!

@earthling_parth

2 жыл бұрын

@@JeffGeerling Thanks Jeff. Any beginner level NAS suggestions/recommendations? I have two Raspberry Pis and some SSDs to play with. Maybe you can create a video on it. I'm sure me and my friends would appreciate it 😬

@JeffGeerling

2 жыл бұрын

@@earthling_parth My series on ASUSTOR vs Pi NAS from earlier this year should help a little. I may do another video on a simple and cheaper ASUSTOR NAS soon, though!

@earthling_parth

2 жыл бұрын

@@JeffGeerling I didn't know about that, will definitely check it out. Highly appreciate you sir. Also, really enjoying your book on Ansible. Thank you for that too ♥️

As long as it's in the cloud through a major cloud provider, it should be safe. I think for most people, an extensive backup plan is not worth the effort. The probability of a reputable cloud provider to lose data is next to 0. Depending on which cloud and plan you go for, the data can be safe from a loss of a single data center from storage across multiple zones. If you lose data through say a worldwide solar storm that destroys data in data centers and your own computer, then you have greater things to worry about than getting your data back.

@pegasusearl

11 ай бұрын

The issue is not that the cloud provider will lose data, but the fact that you can still lose access to that data. Say your account is terminated for some reason. One that I heard from people in the west is for example sending your child photo to your doctor using google drive, and they think it's CP.

@Ghi102

8 ай бұрын

A more realistic problem that shows that keeping things in the Cloud is not enough: What if you accidentally delete an important file? If it's your only file, you could lose it forever

You hit the nail on the head! Thanks for the video. Great information

Good video. Having a backup solution...ANY backups solution is better than not having one!

As far as backing up networking device configuration, having good commented documentation is at least as important. You may very well have to replace your network gear with different versions after a disaster, so the actual cfg binaries may not be much help.

@JeffGeerling

2 жыл бұрын

This is true; it's a good reason why I like to automate configuration (so replacements can pop in with newer OS versions and still get all the right configs applied) rather than backups for any server/network device.

This is great stuff, Jeff! This is one of those things that nobody wants to learn the hard way. 😂

Excellent points. This was so informative.

I have my 3-2-1 plan running. Now my new plan is to fix some holes it has with your content!

Great video and very clear. The one thing I would add to it is that good backups should also include incremental or differential snapshots or otherwise historical copies so when I discover that my document was corrupted before last night's backup ran, I can still go back, say, a week, and pull a working copy of it when needed.

I get a little backed up when i think about my backups. Great video man!

Thanks Jeff, I recently learned this lesson the HARD WAY. fortunately, i was able to restore all my docs and files. had to rebuild both W7 and W10 computers.

You could extend the 3 rule to: 3 cloud copies on 3 different continents, just in case we get a solar flare. Xo Make the 2 rule about 2 physically owned copies in different locations. That way you can drop the 1 rule because then that becomes 4.

On AWS Glacier restores, it’s worth noting they’re expensive mainly because of the outrageous transfer fees, as in $90/TB. In your specific case, it’d cost over $500 to restore everything if you ever need to! However, it’s still much cheaper than other cloud services for large amounts of data, if you consider the fact you most likely won’t need to do that frequently, as you mentioned. In fact, with a good local backup system, you might never need to! On the other hand, you might be able to roll your own off-site NAS for less money if you have such a location, depending on the amount of data you have, especially if you use cheap low-power hardware (like an SBC, the Odroid HC4 and Rock Pi SATA look like good options), and you only power it for a few hours a day.

Really like the github repo. Looking to do something similar with my Raspberry Pi and see all the details are there. Big Thanks

Thanks for the backup protocol reminders!

Great stuff, again!

Oh my GOD. I'm DYING over the stock footage of the airplane guy looking out the window thinking, "did i remember to turn off the stove?"

I mainly use rclone and my computers files but never thought to automate my nas photo backups from my computer as well. Shall make it now :D Thanks for the reminder. Been using rclone for many different style of backups (mainly video) and it has been awesome so far. Rclone mount has a little progress to be made perfect but non the less it still works as it should too :D

Clicked knowing I do a decent-enough backup on an external NAS, but wanted to know more. Halfway in, thinking twice about how wrong I was, but I'm no wizard like Jeff and ain't nobody got time to make a plan! 6 minutes in, Jeff - knowing all of this would come to pass - lays out his template for you to adopt, right when he's hooked you, and made it all easily accessible... Checkmate, Jeff - gg well played. I'm going to revise my backup plan now.

Great Video Jeff. Can you also make a video about how you keep your different data organized? My different types of data is either all over the place or in on big dump of a folder!

Great info. Reminds me that I need to get my offsite rsync machine back up and running.

Good advice but beware automated backups if your not doing incremental or versioned backups. For instance, a daily mirror autobackup from source to local backup to off-site will take three days to fully wipe an accidental delete or an io read failure not being caught by you're raid.

backups don’t exist until a successful restore has happened. also multi versions or sha validation needs to happen lest over time you may be replacing a good version of a file with crap. good video

Gickup, that's awesome! I'm going to start using that for my repos.

I like what CGP Grey says "1 copy is no copy and 2 copies is one copy"

Jeff backup strategy: *9 minute video* My backup strategy: "yolo"

I'm glad to see Red Shirt Jeff wears eye protection! Thanks for the video! Maybe you could make a tutorial about how you set up your AWS setup thanks!

@JeffGeerling

2 жыл бұрын

Doesn't have a safety tie, though :/

Nice short vid, I changed my backup method after a backed up file was corrupted - no media or O/S told me there was a problem. So TrueNAS it is, with a separate TrueNAS Snapshot machine and a 3rd server in a separate building but on the same site. It's something I've slowly built and learned over the last few years. I mainly do this because many of the files are business related and have worth to them (Building/Architectural Design)...using the same system for my personal files is just an added bonus 🙂

Great video. 8:00 - I used to use this method but you have to be more rigorous than I was at remembering/bothering to swap them over. In theory I swapped them once a week. In practice it could go over a month.

My photos are backed up on Cloud, on an external drive and on 2 Pcs. Same with my project folder. Fungible data like books, comics and audiobooks are stored on my laptop and duplicated on the external backup; It would be annoying to lose that stuff but not heartbreaking. I had a hard drive fail about 10 years ago and it had my friends photos as well as mine - the only copies. I put the drive in a triple-sealed bag and then into the freezer overnight. Astoundingly it worked and I learned a valuable lesson.

Excelent! I want more videos like this 😉

Thanks, this topic always kept me awake at night but I never managed to fix the whole chain... I will certainly steal yours and maybe even improve on it... Thanks again ♥

I've been preaching a very similiar backup and recovery approach for 20 years - I built a business on it...no one listens - until its too late and then, well its too late.

I'm currently using Syncthing to synchronize my files between multiple devices, and Mega to backup my most important files to the cloud, my current problem is having an off-site backup. 😅 Great video and very helpful!

When you test your recovery plan, make sure you can do it without your main 2fa solution because that may well have been in the house when it burned down. (I have all my 2fa stuff backed up to a second phone which I leave at my dads house).

Love that grin at the end 🤪🤣

The smile at the END of RedShirtJeff.... Priceless!!!

Good info, thank you.

Great advice - since the early 90's I've stuck to the 'Grandfather, Father, Son' backup strategy but off-site now important too. Not nice to think about - but there is the 'What happens to my online content?' when I'm no longer around - but maybe that's outside of your channel coverage. As always thanks for your content & project videos!

@JeffGeerling

2 жыл бұрын

That's something I have thought about a bit, though not enough. I do have some information in my will about where things can go, but I don't have a full plan of what to do to (ideally) archive and mothball things like my personal website.

CrashPlan just backs up to AWS anyways, but it does some nice encryption and de-dupe, all in a nice little GUI. We use it at work and it's basically set and forget. Had it save my ass multiple times.

@JeffGeerling

2 жыл бұрын

And I think I said "crashplane", oops!

I use an 80TiB NAS for masters, daily full backups of proxmox VMs to the NAS (with full 2 week retention and one image per month retention for the last 12 months). Daily rsync to offsite NAS, which btrfs snapshots each sync and keeps a week’s worth of snapshots. Regular archival to M-Disc BD-XL, which goes into a fire safe, as my “glacier” storage This way, I can trash any of my devices and restore with minimal downtime. I’ve trashed my entire 24 node VM cluster and restored it in a matter of minutes just because I can. You’re absolutely right about sleeping better at night.

Personally, I backup all my data with Duplicati 2 on a mix of Windows, Fedora and RPi machines, once to a local NAS, a second backup to Wasabi (which is tons better than AWS). I also have adhoc bare metal backups using Veritas System Recovery of the OS drives of some machines just in case.

thanks for the info about glacier, did not know it was that cheap. and yes, I sync to a nas and have that rsync to another both in raid 5 so I can lose one drive and keep working.

Man that ending smile! Made my day!

As far as backing up network gear - consider using pfsense software/hardware. Their configurations are easily exportable through their GUI (you can optionally encrypt these too, which might be worth mentioning for remote backups of data).

thanks for the hint... I want to do my backups better and this is a good start

Great video!

I'm a big fan of Acronis for my backups to my NAS. I've had to do emergency restores a few times and it works well. Also works well for transferring data to a new upgraded hard drive.

I'm pretty happy with my current setup. PC has redundant drives, so I can lose any drive and still have everything there. My PC backs up to my One Drive daily and to my NAS weekly. The NAS also has redundant drives, which has actually saved my ass once already when a WD NAS drive I bought second hand crapped out last month.

I agree 100% with your take on backups. Years ago I backed up servers using RAID 1 in the server itself. Then I went to external hard drive with offsite storage (what a pain). Then I had several inhouse NAS devices, with backups of backups. Finally the administration decided they wanted cloud backups, and we ended up with DATTO. I still kept my NAS devices, very handy for a quick restore when someone did something silly. And some DVD's for a few small directories that didn't change very often. You can't have too many backups. It also helps to do test restores occasionally. We did not fall under Sarbanes Oxley, I think those techs had to prove they could restore an entire network, hardware and software, in a couple of days, I might be wrong on that.

Backups are like computers - you can never have too many. Backups have saved me a number of times.

Hey Jeff, thanks for the video - quick question, for your bulk storage in Glacier, what was the cost of the initial upload? I appreciate that it's only $4/month to have it sitting there, but upload costs look... expensive :) Similarly, what are the ongoing upload costs for new data, if you don't mind sharing?

I had two drive failures (one physical, one filesystem) in a week after 5+ year of no issues. Definitely had me scared straight. Still replacing a handful of things that were lost but nothing irreparable.

Great Video as always, I have one thought about your plan. Time machine is a weak backup solution. I do use it but not as a primay backup. It's on my main mac a a fail-safe back only. Something like Carbon Copy Cloner or Superduper can be automated to back up to your NAS. I have Carbon Copy Cloner backing up to my server form my main mac daily. Thanks again for all the great content.

That's crazy I just recently brought the extender for my asustor and was thinking about my 3TB Plex Library and what I would do if something happened. This was vid was heaven-sent.

Hey Jeff, awesome content! For the routers, most of them have APIs that can download the backup files (like openWRT) Can you make one or provide details on how you backup your VMs, and more importantly how you restore them? something like an ubuntu server for example.

If it all goes south I'll ask the NSA. they probably have had all my data for years.

It is also important to have the backup drives disconnected by default. Ransomware and accidental deletion can wipe your data on all accessible drives. I'm still lacking in the "other location" department. Recently I discovered Backblaze but they only support Linux via some more...technical methods.