Re: Backup Restore (Was: Re: Getting started with Tarsnap)

[Scott Wheeler <scott@directededge.com>]

On Feb 14, 2014, at 11:26 PM, Nick Sivo <nick@ycombinator.com> wrote:

>> I can't recommend Tarsnap to others as a viable primary backup tool.
> 
> Primary backups should always be on-premises, no? Nothing will be
> faster than locally attached storage.

That’s arguable if you’re not dealing with massive amounts of data (which I don’t consider 35 GB of uncompressed data to be).  Network speed over a compressed tunnel would let us restore in under 20 minutes, compared to the (projected) 53 hours with Tarsnap.  If our servers catch on fire, anything under an hour for a complete restore would be fine-ish.  Tarsnap isn’t anywhere close to that.  My point was rather that Tarsnap’s slowness isn’t intrinsic to it being a internet-based backup.  Even for an off-site network backup, it’s extremely slow.

-Scott