Borg backup (https://github.com/borgbackup) is an open source backup tool which, in addition to the usual backup features like strong client-side encryption and compression, has several important characteristics which make it particularly suitable for handling large offsite backups (like virtual machine backups):
- Deduplication: this ensures that even if the source files move or change names, that they will not be re-backed up unnecessarily.
- The backup can be moved. Borg backups are just directories – this means that you can make the first, full backup locally, copy it to the destination via a USB disk and the continue incremental backups over the network.
We are currently using borg for several offsite backups, including a weekly offsite backup of VMWare ghettovcb local backups (VM image clones) and the resulting backup traffic is less than 10% of the file size of the local backups (this obviously depends on how much change is occurring between backups, but 90% deduplication is the average over 15 VMs backed up offsite).
The steps to do an initial backup of the directory (data_dir) locally, move it to a remote server (server1) and resume incremental backups to that server (via ssh to user1@server) are as follows:
# initialise a local borg backup repository # in directory borg_repo_dir $ mkdir borg_repo_dir $ borg init borg_repo_dir # make an initial backup # to the local repository $ borg create --stats --progress borg_repo_dir::backup1 data_dir # copy borg_repo_dir to server1 via USB disk # make further (incremental) backups via ssh borg create --stats --progress user1@server1:new_borg_repo_dir::backup1 data_dir
Notes:
(1) borg should be installed on both the client machine and the server machine.
(2) When you move the backup (repository), the name of the directory you move it to does not need to match that which it was moved from.
Thanks to Gabriel for recommending borg!