[Box Backup] Alternate server

[Stuart D. Gathman]

On Wed, 23 Apr 2008, Chris Wilson wrote:

> Yes, you are not the first to suggest this and I am planning to implement 
> it. The main problems are:
> 
> * S3 does not support files over 2GB, so they have to be split up

Sounds nasty.

> * S3 is unreliable (frequent failure to write a file, with error 500, that 
>   subsequently succeeds if retried)

Ditto.

> * S3 does not support the client-server bandwidth efficiency stuff that 
>   bbackupd does when talking to bbstored, so you have to run bbstored on 
>   an EC2 server

So client is not trivially adapted for S3.  It is easier to specialize
the server to use S3 for backend.  Especially when it needs to handle
nastiness like the above.

> * Testing all this would get expensive for me (monthly charges for an EC2 
>   server and S3 account and storage of test data)
> * I need to write an S3 emulator for the unit tests

For this, just use a local web server with PUT/DELETE enabled.  Put
warnings in, and rely on early adopters to test with actual S3.  Should
just be a change of URL and authentication.

Thanks for the info.  Looks like I'll be using "across-town" remote
backup for the time being with boxbackup if I can get it set up easily
(otherwise I'll use rsync).  It is a great feature that the server runs as a
regular user!  "Across-town" handles fire and tornadoes, just not nuclear
attack.  And frankly, in that case, I won't care!

-- 
	      Stuart D. Gathman <stuart@bmsi.com>
    Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis" - background song for
a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from here?" commercial.