[Borgbackup] borgbackup 1.2.0a5 alpha release

[Melkor Lord]

On 26/03/2019 08:58, Oon-Ee Ng wrote:

> The assumption that the client is the risk and not the server is not shared
> by all. In particular when the server is off-site or on a third-party
> server, it makes sense that it be treated as untrusted (this is what borg
> assumes based on the implementation and documentation).

If the client is the risk, then having the server contacting the client 
is secure by design. There's nothing the client can do to the server to 
compromise it, especially if there's no entry point to the server (ssh 
or other with appropriate firewall rules)

If the server is treated as untrusted, I wouldn't put my backup data 
there in the first place :-)

>   Besides, a 'sort-of' pull mode (with a capable server) can already be done
> by remote mounting client directories on the backup server and then running
> borgbackup from that.

This is cumbersome and fragile at best! It works for the most basic 
setups but you can forget it for more serious scenarios. For example 
when using FS ACLs, there's no remote mounting solution supporting that 
properly.

I guess I'm stuck with no proper backup solution for a big server farm 
then, at least not using Borg nor Restic for the time being.

Having all the servers (clients) banging/hammering the backup server at 
the same time it definitely not a nice solution. Trying to add some 
delay to the cron jobs on the clients to avoid that is an inelegant 
kludge in my opinion. Instead, having the backup server decide which 
servers to contact and efficiently use the I/O and network bandwidth is 
way better.

Is there anyone here using Borg in a datacenter infrastructure? With a 
good deal of servers pushing their data to a "central" backup server? I 
wonder how you manage it efficiently.

I've read here some stories about huge repos but no story yet about lots 
of clients pushing to a backup server. I'd like some feedback on that if 
you're willing to share your experience.

-- 
Unix _IS_ user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.