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I use Slicehost for my VPS needs and am generally very pleased with them.

They charge $12.50 per month for their backup service. It seems like the system has been designed to be idiot proof. In their own words:

Backups are offered as an add on service and priced according to Slice size. They give you the ability to automatically run a backup without disrupting the system. At any given time, you have access to 3 images of your system: a daily (less than 24 hours), a weekly (less than 7 days) and a snapshot (variable). Monthly pricing is $5/$7.50/$10/$12.50/$15/$22.50/$30 for 256/384/512/768/1024/1536/2048 slices.

This seems OK, but I feel like I could benefit from a bit more control (especially with respect to content and timing). I also suspect that a 3rd party might be able to beat them on price.

An option I did consider was rsyncing the filesystem to another machine/image. This seems like a more involved process than I'd like, but I'd happily consider it if it were significantly less expensive.

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  • Product and service recommendations, even alternatives recon, is off topic per the FAQ.
    – sysadmin1138
    Jan 15, 2012 at 3:48

2 Answers 2

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I also suspect that a 3rd party might be able to beat them on price.

There are more considerations than price. A restore from a Slicehost snapshot takes a couple minutes at most. A restore from a remote backup may take hours or more, depending on how much data you've synced over.

This seems like a more involved process than I'd like, but I'd happily consider it if it were significantly less expensive.

How much is your time worth?

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  • Two good points. In our particular case, the former is pretty important and wasn't something I'd considered. As for the latter, well, I like interesting challenges and my time is pretty elastic. ;)
    – Tom Wright
    Jul 7, 2011 at 14:58
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Rsync is probably the simplest and while the setup may take a while, remember that it is a once off cost. Once you have it setup properly with keys you should not need to alter it again.

I personally prefer rdiff-backup (http://www.nongnu.org/rdiff-backup/) which is only a little bit more complex than rsync, but provides many useful features.

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  • My one concern with rsync/rdiff is the fact I'll still need a destination system. Are there any specialist providers of systems intended solely for backing up?
    – Tom Wright
    Jul 7, 2011 at 14:55

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