On 11/11/24 2:43 PM, Dave Howorth wrote:
I just read a newspaper article about house fires, and it struck me that one of the things that might well be lost in such a mishap would be my financial records etc that are stored on my computer.
Having just lived though this example where my office was lost, offsite backups are critical. For 20 years I had a simple cron job that called rsync to sync servers between home and work. As the firemen were up on top of the 2nd floor with a 60 foot hook and ladder with chainsaws running to cut holes in the roof and the 900 HP turbo-pumps blasting 1200 gal/min down the hole -- I was glad to have the data mirrored. Depending on your connection, the initial move of data can be by flash-drive and sneaker-net if you have terrabytes to sync. The rsync handles the daily changes in both directions. No office, no 2nd ISP, so now I'm in your boat and I really don't know what I will do (I keep a grab-n-go 128G MicroSD in a Pi Zero 2 W I can unplug and stick in my pocket on the way out) While there are many sub-$5/month VM solutions you can buy, the issue is one of security. With the endless (daily) reported breaches of the supposedly most secure companies using supposedly best-practices, it is forseeable data out of your control is subject to being data stolen. In my particular circumstance with the safekeeping requirements imposed, and potential loss of my license if client data is compromised, there simply isn't a commercial site I trust to use as an offsite backup now. ... and that is sad. I'm almost to the point of looking for another self-hosting comrade to swap 50G of server space with to provide a solution for both... It's a vexing problem. Sticking another Linux box at one of my kids houses may be an option there - I'd just have to work with the dyn-ip issue and potential port blocking for non-business accounts. This is a tough issue to solve absent having 2 physical locations at your disposal. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.