Hi,
I've been following the amazon thread about s3sync and am actively monitoring this forum.
There is a lot of information in both sites, but very few success stories. I'd like to add this (my) one:
I've installed s3sync (and ruby and openssl) on a Synology CubeStation CS-406, a NAS-Box that provides 2 TB of Storage.
A small script starts s3sync.rb and logs its doings - and is itself called repeatedly by cron.
The machine is connected to the internet via a 4 Mbit/sec downstream and a measly 384 Kbit/sec upstream. A very common setup in my country.
Every 24 h the line is automatically disconnected by my provider. My router immediately logs back in, but there's a drop in the connection that everything (including s3sync) has to cope with (think of transferring files during that outages).
In the meantime I've uploaded some 136,867 files plus (well, thats the actual number, but many of those files have changed frequently since then - I'd guess there have been some 400,000 files transferred; thats just a guess, though).
The NAS-Box hasn't been online all the time. Sometimes a bunch of a thousand files had to be updated/removed. Sometimes just a few logs. At one point I changed the file system structure, which meant to update everything.
I made my experiences with errors in the scripts, typos by me (ex: /path/to/files/ and /path/to/files ), updates of the NAS-Box' OS, almost everything that I could think of. Nothing ever failed me.
As the script mirrors the contents of the NAS-Box to Amazon S3 as a backup, yes, I've tried a restore, too. Multiple times. It works.
Since I've set up this scenario in february, nothing has ever failed me. Not once. Not one single time.
Impressive.
Next weekend I'm going to change the harddrives of the RAID one at a time to upgrade the capacity. No sweat here. If everything fails, I just grab s3sync and restore everything from amazon. (Okay, that'll be a major annoyance for hours if not days, agreed. But just an annoyance.)
I'm protected agains malfunctions of my hardware, stupidity or errors on my part, and - as long as amazon does its own job - even against a total loss of everything at my location.
That is exactly the peace of mind I was always searching for.
It wouldn't have worked - and would not work - without s3sync.
And yes, I have tested - and to some extend worked with - other alternatives, but always came back to s3sync.
Easy of use, I guess. No GUI, great. "Scriptable" with bash (ash, in my case), perfect!
Two words:
THANK YOU. Cheers.
Ah, yes. I'm using Cockpit (on mac as well as windows or linux) as a means to check on s3syncs progress or doings from time to time. Very nice tool, too.
