Re: Glacier Storage

[Colin Percival <cperciva@tarsnap.com>]

Hi Hugo & list,

On 02/21/15 22:14, Hugo Osvaldo Barrera wrote:
> I need to store some backups files for really long-term (eg: I've no intention
> of checking them out unless I have some serious hardware crashes).
> 
> I realize that tarsnap uses AWS for file storage, and these sort of files could
> really be stored in Amazon Glacier (which has lower storage costs). I'm
> wondering if you guys (eg: tarsnap devs) would ever be willing to implement a
> a feature to mark a certain file (or maybe all the files stored with a certain
> key) as frozen/long term storge.
> 
> I'm not just thinking about reducing costs to the end users; some of the
> savings can be kept by tarsnap itself in these scenarios, and, unless the
> implementation is a pain, there might end up being some profit on both sides.
> 
> What do you guys think? Is this doable, or is there some technical limitation?

I discuss this in some detail in the blog post which Marcin linked to, but the
short answer is: It's not possible to mark particular files for "cold storage"
due to tarsnap's deduplication; it would theoretically be possible to mark
all the files stored with a particular key as being frozen (glaciated?); but
the implementation would be a pain given the way that the tarsnap server works
right now.

This is something I want to support eventually, but it's a long way off.

-- 
Colin Percival
Security Officer Emeritus, FreeBSD | The power to serve
Founder, Tarsnap | www.tarsnap.com | Online backups for the truly paranoid