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by wofo 1051 days ago
Interesting timing... A few weeks ago I evaluated using tarsnap for my business and ended up going for borg + rsync.net, for some of the reasons pointed out in the post. It seemed like the more "professional" option (the website was clearer and the service didn't require me to top-up at irregular intervals). I guess I'm not the intended audience of tarsnap.
1 comments
rcxdude 1051 days ago
I would characterise rsync.net as aiming at a similar market segment. Both of them have a big "by geeks, for geeks" vibe (rsync.net even has a page designed to be sent to your boss if you're recommending it at work), in fact in some ways rsync.net is even more barebones: they don't even provide their own backup utility, it's basically just an SSH login to a ZFS volume. But it is a lot cheaper, it has some unique features like supporting raw ZFS send, and it has the alert-if-your-backup-stops-running feature that tarsnap apparently lacks, as well as the generally friendlier billing approach you mention.
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6581 1050 days ago
> they don't even provide their own backup utility

They do for Windows: https://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/windows_backup_agent.h...

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bogwog 1050 days ago
rsync.net is more expensive than something like backblaze though, which makes me wonder why someone would use it other than for the geek factor.

The OP alluded to tarsnap being the best, but didn't really explain why that is. Rsync too sounds like it'd be fun to use, but it's 3x the price of backblaze b2 and has a minimum order size of ~$10/month

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rcxdude 1050 days ago
For me I use it because of their ZFS send support. It's just way easier with the system I have to use that as opposed to any other option. The cost difference is worth that for my situation (a decent but not huge amount of data and limited time to spend on managing it). (There are also some potential advantages in that it is just an online file store which you can pull from and validate at any time, as opposed to having a specific process for a restore). Also the cost on their website is a starting point, you may find they can go cheaper if it matters to you (and e.g. if you are willing to use a different payment schedule).
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carapace 1050 days ago
> why someone would use it other than for the geek factor.

FWIW I (eventually) moved to rsync.net from BB because of that time BB put some JS on their web interface that sent... was it filenames to Facebook? Something like that. I'm using Restic so it was completely painless.

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