[Borgbackup] Raspberry pi 4 for borg server

[Thorsten von Eicken]

Rather than poo-pooing the use of SBCs outright, I think it's worth 
being more nuanced about it. I've been using an Odroid C1 and an Odroid 
HC2 as borg servers for many years now. The (important) context is that 
I'm backing up two home desktops, a laptop, and several small home servers.

The HC2 runs off an EMMC, has GB ethernet and a fast SATA interface with 
a very nicely integrated mount for a 3.5" drive. It's also my media 
server (but I'm not a video hoarder). I've never perceived any 
memory/speed limitation. I do nightlies to the primary 3.5" drive and I 
have an additional identical drive on an external USB3-SATA bridge to 
which I rsync daily. I prefer this non-raid duplication 'cause it's dead 
simple.

The OC1 has GB ethernet but the 2.5" disk is attached via USB2, hence 
slow. It's located out in the yard, buried, as a catastrophic backup as 
I live in a high-fire area. I do backups to it once a week, mostly 
copying stuff from the HC2. They're slow, but that's OK. As a bonus, I 
can take the USB drive truly off-site for "long-term" storage and 
replace it. I also ship backups once a clear to cloud storage but am 
weary about the costs and the time it takes to retrieve something (I 
don't have GB fiber to the home by a long shot). I do find value for 
decade-long archiving, though.

What I like about this set-up is that (a) it uses little electricity, 
(b) the components are all cheap so you can afford a spare or else get 
one next-day, (c) there's nothing complicated in any of the set-up. 
Would I use this in a commercial setting: no. It all depends on the 
context...

Thorsten


On 12/23/19 2:22 AM, Thomas Waldmann wrote:
>> Would the new raspberry pi 4 with 4gb ram and separate nic at gigabit
>> speed be enough for an smb to use borg backup on prem on a Pi 4 to send
>> data off-site to a receiving server with borg installed?
> I don't personally have a rpi4, but I used its predecessors.
>
> I usually advise against using rpi (or similar SBCs) for borg. Even for
> the rpi4, these potential issues remain:
>
> - RAM is not expandable, so no matter how much they have, it means game
> over for the case you'ld need more (now or some day in the future).
>
> - no ECC RAM
>
> - SD cards sometimes are crappy and the rpi OS is often stored on SD.
>
> - The rpi4 is faster than its predecessors, but still not on the level
> of PC or server hardware, neither when looking at speed nor when looking
> at reliability.
>
>
> So whether that is good enough for you depends a lot on how much data
> you have and how that will grow in future. Also on how important /
> valuable your data is.
>
>
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