Saturday, August 21, 2010

Automated backups to Amazon S3

Just got around setting an automated backup to Amazon S3. Until now my backup was limited to Personal Computer -> Home Server -> External USB Drive all under one roof. Over the years I have gathered a lot of document clutter and have been lately scanning them and destroying the originals and that means that if the digital copy is gone then I am kaput. Having a copy on the S3 is good both backup wise and access from anywhere wise. Although I have setup my home server to be accessible from outside its still slow when downloading large files. As of now i have limited S3 to important stuff (just documents), I would eventually like to offload all my digital content o S3 (songs, pictures, videos etc) which would mean shelling more moola to Amazon. I wouldn't be accessing these content frequently so the cost is pretty much the storage cost and off-course the weekly rsync seeks. I also choose the 99.99% (0.10c/gb monthly) reliability over the 99.9999999% (0.15c/gb monthly) reliability as I am conformable with that given that I have a copy on my end too. S3 also has a special offer till Nov 1 wherein they are waving all "Data transfer In" fees. Below are some links that I used to setup :

AWS S3 pricing : http://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/
S3Sync and S3cmd tool : http://www.s3sync.net/wiki

Installing S3sync script: http://www.linode.com/wiki/index.php/Backups_with_s3sync

Setting up automated backup using S3sync on S3
http://blog.eberly.org/2006/10/09/how-automate-your-backup-to-amazon-s3-using-s3sync/

General article on home server vs S3 backup : http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/007624.html
S3 based backup tools: http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/007641.html

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