My current off-site backup is a couple of hard drives in external (usb2) enclosures, which are rotated to a family member’s house. I’m now pondering adding a cloud-based backup to my environment.
The problem with cloud backups is security – I want to encrypt the data locally, and then be able to rsync it to another location (e.g. Amazon Glacier).
So after some quick googling, it seems there’s not a lot out there which satisfies my (basic) needs:
- Transparent to NAS function and users
- Encrypted locally
- Synchronised periodically with remote store
- Only transfer bytes/blocks which have changed.
For now, it looks like my best bet is to implement something like:
- Create a Truecrypt volume
- Automate ZFS snapshot for backup purposes (simple using freeNAS)
- Rsync ZFS snapshot contents to Truecrypt volume
- Rsync Truecrypt volume to remote cloud (or removeable media etc).
This is all conjecture at this stage – I need to try actually implementing it, and want to spend more time reading/looking for alternatives too. More will come as my list of “projects” reduces 🙂
Some links I read to get to this conclusion:
http://superuser.com/questions/322886/truecrypt-rsync-container
http://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/windows_truecrypt.html
http://chrisfleischhacker.wordpress.com/2013/06/19/use-truecrypt-and-skydrive-to-encrypt-your-sensitive-files-and-store-them-in-the-cloud-nsa-proof-accessible-anywhere/ (especially the comments)
Addition: I’m also looking, whilst doing this, for a backup solution for an elderly relative to use from their Windows laptop which will backup important documents (financial, etc.) to something like Google Drive or maybe Dropbox – I came across Cryptsync which looks like a simple solution!
Ooroo!
Wired Dad.