I am working on a project to archive data from onsite to an offsite location, specifically for worst-case, DR scenarios. Normally I would schedule a crontab job to backup “todays” data, compress “yesterdays” data, and perform a rolling delete of previous archives. This is what I’m used to professionally in multiple shops. However, the company I use for offsite storage recommends borgbackup isntead of rsync. I have decided it’s not worth being stubborn and using rsync anyways, but rather to post here and learn! I want to get feedback and a better understanding Borg (outside of reading the documentation.)
Does anyone here use borg for their selfhosted/homelab backup needs? What tips & tricks can you offer? What other resources can I use (with the exception of AI/LLM tools.)
Any and all feedback is welcome and appreciated!
rsync is a fine tool, but it’s not really for backups. It’s for unidirectionally syncing data, which is part of a backup.
There are tools that use librsync to do a backup system, like rdiff-backup or duplicity.
I have used rdiff-backup in the past, but restic supports deduping data keyed off content rather than filename, which is functionality that I rather like having. I drive a restic job from backupninja, which handles doing things like notifying you if a backup has failed.