Backups Aren't Simple
Points and comments are a snapshot, not live.
Backups are complex, requiring careful planning and dedicated tooling.
The article details the many layers of complexity in designing a robust backup strategy, from simple copies to GFS-rotated, deduplicated, incremental snapshots. It covers pitfalls like database consistency, file permissions, and offsite storage costs. The author concludes that rolling a custom solution is not worth the effort, recommending tools like Borg or Restic that handle encryption, chunk-level deduplication, and integrity checks. Testing restores regularly is essential.
What commenters are saying
Commenters strongly agree that testing restores is the only thing that matters, sharing anecdotes of hand-rolled solutions failing. Borg and Restic are widely recommended, but a dissenting comment reports silently corrupted data with Borg due to a known issue. Kopia is also discussed, with notes on its limitations for scripting and piping. Several users share practical tips: one uses production backups to refresh a test environment weekly, another adds a random restore test to his backup script.