I was thinking of getting an R1SOFT license, but I am looking at other ways of doing backups/restores as well.

All of my servers are at least mirrored, but that only helps drive failures, I was thinking of utilizing R1SOFTs feature of integrating restores for the client via cPanel, that seems like it could be a great selling point, but I was reading that it's also a bit resource intensive? Anyone have any ideas HOW intensive?

Otherwis I was thinking RSYNC - http://www.samba.org/rsync/
tied with the integrate cPanel backup..obviously this is the free method, but not really marketable like R1SOFTs features are.

What methods do you guys prefer? I have not actually had a request for a file restore, so I am looking into the future here.


Now for the actual backup server :

I have a few dedicated servers right now, all in one datacenter, I was thinking of purchasing an ATOM server JUST to push backups to...what kind of storage should I get? A RAID-1 SATA disk work just fine, or should I consider getting some sort of NAS/SAS from the datacenter?

What is the common thing to do for the smaller web hosting companies like myself? In case of catastrophic server failures and I need to do a full restore, or clients want files they deleted?

We rsync our data to various locations currently, no major issues. When the backup's have been called upon they have worked fine.

We are looking at R1Soft though.

We just use a rsync backup to a couple places.

That works for us, and we have had no problems with that as of yet.

Do you guys think it'd be OK to get a little atom server with 2 gigs of ram, and 500gb of mirrored drives and use that as backups? Be it R1SOFT, or rsync?

Anyone chime in about using R1SYNC and how it's helped sales, or how resource heavy the application actually is?

Ya, that would be fine. Just do you know, you can rent backup space, just like shared hosting, but for backups only. If you are going the server route, be sure you are on a fast port so transfers don't take 3 hours to finish.

Yeah, but it's typically JUST FTP backup access....no SSH for RSYNC.

You can get rsync backup space. Check out http://www.webbycart.com/backup.htm and www.rsyncpalace.com (http://www.rsyncpalace.com).

I can get an atom server, with 500gbx2 for 50 bucks a month, AT the datacenter, with the company I am renting my servers from in the first place, so i'd probably stick with that at least.

I am still curious what kind of load the r1sync puts on the web server.

Anyone have any ideas HOW intensive?


vivithemage this might help you here regarding resource utilization (http://www.hawkhost.com/blog/2008/07/09/r1soft-making-a-difference/).

Do you guys think it'd be OK to get a little atom server with 2 gigs of ram, and 500gb of mirrored drives and use that as backups?

Just thought I would chime in about the idea of using an Atom...

Go for it! I have multiple Atoms in production for backup boxes, Exchange Servers, etc etc and they work perfectly!

Not only are they energy efficient, but they are a cost efficient way to get the job done.

vivithemage this might help you here regarding resource utilization (http://www.hawkhost.com/blog/2008/07/09/r1soft-making-a-difference/).


I'd like to point out while not intensive things have been a little rocky for us as of late. Don't get me wrong R1Soft is great but fragmentation or something is causing us problems with slow restores, deletion of old restore points and probably backups as well. There are posts on the R1Soft forums already by various people seeing it with older disk safes. I just hope it's better in version 3 with regards to this one issue.

I just hope it's better in version 3 with regards to this one issue.

We're looking forward to version 3.0 too so that we can make R1Soft an option for our customers.

Mario, any updates on the 3.0 timeline?

We are using R1soft for our backup solutions. It does great work for us.

Yes we also use R1soft for our backups. We also do an offsite backup.

Good luck in the search.

Rsync here, and works fine.

Contact rsyncpalace.com otto and the team is great and has nice deals too.

Great, thank you guys for the information! I think I will try out R1SOFT, see if it's worth setting up.