Show HN: SNEBU -- Simple Network Backup Utility | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: SNEBU -- Simple Network Backup Utility

snebu.com

1 pointderekp74 comments

This is my first major open source project. I would appreciate any feedback on the setup on Github (is there features I'm mis-using or not aware of, etc).

Basically, this is a backup tool that is one step better than rsync-based backups (has a database[sqlplus] based backup catalog, supports compression, etc), without the complexity the bigger backup solutions.

You should lead with a feature matrix comparing SNEBU to rsync because you really need to differentiate yourself from rsync, which has been the standard for 15 years.

Everyone writes some kind of recursive backup tool, just like everybody writes their own templating system and TODO list manager. Set yourself apart.

Thanks for your feedback. Do you think this tool has potential (in other words, does the world need yet another backup tool)? Essentially, I'm trying to position this as a slight step up from rsync/hardlinks backups (such as rsnapshot, etc), in that it has a backup catalog database, and compressed backup files (also file-level deduplication if you are backing up multiple servers). Yet it is simpler to setup and use then the heavy-weight backup utilities (Amanda, Bacula, commercial solutions, etc).

The other feature that should be worth touting is that you don't need to install anything special on the source repository.

I think it has potential. The problem space is complex enough that many different solutions can exist. For example, at my current job we ended up creating our own backup system that would let us easily sneakernet old copies of the data to our offsite location.

For what it's worth, some other open source backup tools that are similar are rdiff-backup and obnam. I've been meaning to make a page like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_online_backup_ser... but for open source solutions.

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