Linux backup open source

5 Awesome Open Source Backup Software For Linux and Unix-like Systems

A good backup plan is essential in order to have the ability to recover from

• Human errors
• RAID or disk failure
• File system corruption
• Data center destruction and more.

In this post I’m going to list amazingly awesome open source Backup software for you.

What to look for when choosing backup software for an enterprise?

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1. Open source software – You must use software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be and modified. This ensures that you can recover your data in case vendor/project stopped working on software or refused to provide patches.
2. Cross-platform support – Make sure backup software works well on the OS deployed on all desktop and server operating systems.
3. Data format – Open data format ensures that you can recover data in case vendor or project stopped working on software.
4. Autochangers – Autochangers are nothing but a variety of backup devices, including library, near-line storage, and autoloader. Autochangers allows you to automate the task of loading, mounting, and labeling backup media such as tape.
5. Backup media – Make sure you can backup data on tape, disk, DVD and in cloud storage such as AWS.
6. Encryption datastream – Make sure all client-to-server traffic will be encrypted to ensure transmission integrity over the LAN/WAN/Internet.
7. Database support – Make sure backup software can backup database server such as MySQL or Oracle.
8. Backup span multiple volumes – Backup software can split each backup (dumpfile) into a series of parts, allowing for different parts to existing on different volumes. This ensures that large backups (such as 100TB file) can be stored on larger than a single backup device such as disk or tape volume.
9. VSS (Volume Shadow Copy) – It is Microsoft’s Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and it is used to create snapshots of data that is to be backed up. Make sure backup software support VSS for MS-Windows client/server.
10. Deduplication – It is a data compression technique for eliminating duplicate copies of repeating data (for example, images).
11. License and cost – Make sure you understand and use of open source license under which the original backup software is made available to you.
12. Commercial support – Open source software can provide community based (such as email list or fourm) or professional (such as subscriptions provided at additional cost) based support. You can use paid professional support for training and consulting purpose.
13. Reports and alerts – Finally, you must able to see backup reports, current job status, and get alert when something goes wrong while making backups.

Bacula – Client/server backup tool for heterogeneous networks

I personally use this software to manage backup and recovery across a network of computers including Linux, OSX and Windows. You can configure it via a CLI, GUI or web interface.

Operating system : Cross-platform

Backup Levels : Full, differential, incremental, and consolidation.

Data format: Custom but fully open.

Autochangers: Yes

Backup media: Tape/Disk/DVD

Encryption datastream: Yes

Database support: MSSQL/PostgreSQL/Oracle/

Backup span multiple volumes: Yes

VSS: Yes

License : Affero General Public License v3.0

Download url : bacula.org

Amanda – Another good client/server backup tool

AMANDA is an acronym for Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver. It allows the sysadmin to set up a single backup server to back up other hosts over network to tape drives or disk or authchangers.

Operating system : Cross-platform

Backup Levels : Full, differential, incremental, and consolidation.

Data format: Open (can be recovered using tool such as tar).

Autochangers: Yes

Backup media: Tape/Disk/DVD

Encryption datastream: Yes

Database support: MSSQL/Oracle

Backup span multiple volumes: Yes

VSS: Yes

License : GPL, LGPL, Apache, Amanda License

Download url : amanda.org

Backupninja – Lightweight backup system

Backupninja is a simple and easy to use backup system. You can simply drop a config files into /etc/backup.d/ to backup multiple hosts.

Operating system : Linux/Unix

Backup Levels : Full and incremental (rsync+hard links)

Data format: Open

Autochangers: N/A

Backup media: Disk/DVD/CD/ISO images

Encryption datastream: Yes (ssh) and encrypted remote backups via duplicity

Database support: MySQL/PostgreSQL/OpenLDAP and subversion or trac repositories.

Backup span multiple volumes: ??

VSS: ??

License : GPL

Download url : riseup.net

Backuppc – High-performance client/server tool

Backuppc is can be used to backup Linux and Windows based systems to a master server’s disk. It comes with a clever pooling scheme minimizes disk storage, disk I/O and network I/O.

Operating system : Linux/Unix and Windows

Backup Levels : Full and incremental (rsync+hard links and pooling scheme)

Data format: Open

Autochangers: N/A

Backup media: Disk/RAID storage

Encryption datastream: Yes

Database support: Yes (via custom shell scripts)

Backup span multiple volumes: ??

VSS: ??

License : GPL

Download url : backuppc.sourceforge.net

UrBackup – Easy to setup client/server system

It is an easy to setup open source client/server backup system, that through a combination of image and file backups accomplishes both data safety and a fast restoration time. Your files can be restored through the web interface or the Windows Explorer while the backups of drive volumes can be restored with a bootable CD or USB-Stick (bare metal restore). A web interface makes setting up your own backup server really easy.

Operating system : Linux/FreeBSD/Unix/Windows/several Linux based NAS operating systems. Client only runs on Linux and Windows.

Backup Levels : Full and incremental

Data format: Open

Autochangers: N/A

Backup media: Disk/Raid storage/DVD

Encryption datastream: Yes

Database support: ??

Backup span multiple volumes: ??

VSS: ??

License : GPL v3+

Download url : urbackup.org

Other awesome open source backup software for your consideration

The Amanda, Bacula and above-mentioned software are feature rich but can be complicated to set for small network or a single server. I recommend that you study and use the following backup software:

1. Rsnapshot – I recommend this tool for local and remote filesystem snapshot utility. See how to set and use this tool on Debian/Ubuntu Linux and CentOS/RHEL based systems.
2. rdiff-backup – Another great remote incremental backup tool for Unix-like systems.
3. Burp – Burp is a network backup and restore program. It uses librsync in order to save network traffic and to save on the amount of space that is used by each backup. It also uses VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service) to make snapshots when backing up Windows computers.
4. Duplicity – Great encrypted bandwidth-efficient backup for Unix-like system. See how to Install Duplicity for encrypted backup in cloud for more infomation.
5. SafeKeep – SafeKeep is a centralized and easy to use backup application that combines the best features of a mirror and an incremental backup.
6. DREBS – DREBS is a tool for taking periodic snapshots of EBS volumes. It is designed to be run on the EC2 host which the EBS volumes to be snapshoted are attached.
7. Old good unix programs like rsync, tar, cpio, mt and dump.

Conclusion

I hope you will find this post useful to backup your important data. Do not forgot to verify your backups and make multiple backup copies of your data. Also, RAID is not a backup solution. Use any one of the above-mentioned programs to backup your servers, desktop/laptop and personal mobile devices. If you know of any other open source backup software I didn’t mention, share them in the comments below.

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25 Outstanding Backup Utilities for Linux Systems in 2020

Backup on personal computers or servers is always important to prevent permanent data loss. Therefore getting to know different backup tools is very important especially for System Administrators who work with large amounts of enterprise-level data and even on personal computers.

It is always a good practice to keep on backing up data on our computers, this can either be done manually or configured to work automatically. Many backup tools have different features that allow users to configure the type of backup, time of backup, what to backup, logging backup activities and many more

In this article, we shall take a look at 25 outstanding backup tools that you can use on Linux servers or systems.

Honorable Mention – CloudBerry Backup

CloudBerry Backup for Linux is a cross-platform cloud backup solution with advanced backup configuration settings and providing total security of data.

CloudBerry Backup for Linux

With this tool you can backup files and folders to the cloud storage of your choice: it supports more than 20 wide-known cloud storage services. CloudBerry Backup works with Ubuntu, Debian, Suse, Red Hat, and other Linux distributions and is also compatible with Windows and Mac OSs.

The primary backup features are:

• Compression
• 256-bit AES Encryption
• Scheduled backup
• Incremental backup
• Command-line interface
• Retention policy and more.

1. Rsync

It is a command-line backup tool popular among Linux users especially System Administrators. It feature-rich including incremental backups, update whole directory tree and file system, both local and remote backups, preserves file permissions, ownership, links and many more.

It also has a graphical user interface called Grsync but one advantage with the rsync is that backups can be automated using scripts and cron jobs when used by experienced System Administrators on the command line.

Rsync Backup Tool

We’ve covered so many articles on rsync tool in the past, you can go through them below:

2. Fwbackups

It is free and open-source software which is cross-platform and feature-rich and users can contribute to its development or just participate in testing it. It has an intuitive interface that allows users to do backups easily.

It has features such as:

1. Simple interface
2. Flexibility in the backup configuration
3. Remote backups
4. Backup an entire file system
5. Exclude files and directories plus many more

fwbackups for Linux

3. Bacula

It is open-source data backup, recovery and verification software that is designed to be enterprise-ready with certain complexities, though these complexities actually define its powerful features such as backup configurations, remote backups plus many more.

It is network-based and is made up of the following programs:

1. a director: program that supervises all operations of Bacula.
2. a console: program that allows a user to communicate with the Bacula director above.
3. a file: program that is installed on the machine to be backed up.
4. storage: program that is used to read and write to your storage space.
5. catalog: program responsible for the databases used.
6. Monitor: program that keeps track of all events happening in different parts of Bacula.

Bacula Backup Tool for Linux

4. Backupninja

It is a powerful backup tool that allows users to design backup activity configuration files that can be drooped in /etc/backup.d/ directory. It helps to perform secure, remote and also incremental backups over a network.

It has got the following features:

1. Easy to read ini style configuration files.
2. Use scripts to handle new types of backups on your system.
3. Schedule backups
4. Users can choose when status report emails are mailed to them.
5. Easily create a backup action configuration file with a console-based wizard (ninjahelper).
6. Works with Linux-Vservers.

BackupNinja Tool

5. Simple Backup Suite (sbackup)

It is a backup solution for Gnome desktop where users can access all configurations via the Gnome interface. Users can use regex to specify file and directory paths during the backup process.

It has the following features:

1. Creates compressed and uncompressed backups.
2. Supports multiple backup profiles.
3. Allows logging, email notifications.
4. Scheduled backups and manual backups.
5. Split uncompressed backups into several chunks.
6. Supports local and remote backups.

Simple Backup sbackup Tool

6. Kbackup

It is an easy to use backup tool for the Unix operating system and can be used on Linux. It can create archives and compress them using tar and gzip utilities respectively.

Kbackup has got the following features:

1. User-friendly and menu-driven interface.
2. Support for compression, encryption and double buffering.
3. Automated unattended backups.
4. High reliability.
5. Support for full or incremental backups.
6. Remote backup across networks.
7. Portable and extensive documentation among others.

kBackup Tool for Linux

7. BackupPC

It is a cross-platform backup software that can run on Unix/Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. It is designed for enterprise-level use with a high-performance measure. BackupPC can be used on servers, desktop, and laptop computers.

It has some of the following features:

1. File compression to reduce disk space usage.
2. No need for client-side software.
3. Flexibility during the backup restoration
4. Flexibility in configuring through different parameters.
5. User notifications about the need for backups and so on.

BackupPC Server

8. Amanda

Amanda is open-source software that works on Unix/GNU Linux and Windows. It supports native backup utilities and formats such as GNU tar for backups on Unix/Linux. And for backups on Windows machine, it uses a native Windows client. Users can set up a single backup server to store backups from several machines on a network.

9. Back In Time

It is simple and easy to use backup tools for Linux operating system and works by taking snapshots of specified directories and backing them up.

It has features such as configuring:

1. Storage location to save snapshots.
2. Manual or automatic backups.
3. Directories to backup.

Back in Time Backup

10. Mondorescue

This is a free backup and rescue software that is reliable and all features-inclusive. It can perform backups from personal computers, work stations or servers to hard disk partitions, tapes, NFS, CD-[R|W], DVD-R[W], DVD+R[W] and many more.

It also has data rescue and recovery abilities during the backup process in case of any destructive events.

Mondorescue Backup Tool for Linux

11. Box Backup Tool

It is an open-source backup tool and can be configured to work automatically. It has features such as:

1. Online backups
2. Backup daemon for automated backups
3. Storage of backups in files
4. Data compression and encryption
5. Tape like behavior
6. Choice of backup behavior plus many others

12. Luckybackup

It is a free powerful, quick, reliable and easy to use backup and sync tool that is powered by the Rsync backup tool.

It is feature-rich with features such as:

1. Preserve ownership and file permissions.
2. Create multiple backup snapshots.
3. Advanced options files and directories.
4. Exclude options and use rsync options and many more.

LuckyBackup Tool

13. Areca

It is an open-source backup tool that is intended for personal use and it allows a user to select a set of files or directories to backup and select the backup method and storage location.

It has features such as:

1. Email notifications about the backup process.
2. Simplicity in use in terms of configurations.
3. Browse archives and many more.

14. Bareos Data Protection

It is an open-source set of programs that allows users to backup, recover and protect data on Linux systems. It is an idea forked from the Bacula backup tool project and works on a network in a client/server architecture.

The basic functionalities are free but payment is required to use professional backup features. It has features of the Bacula backup tool.

15. BorgBackup

BorgBackup is a free open source, efficient as well as secure command-line based deduplicating archiver/backup tool with support for compression and authenticated encryption. It can be used to perform daily backups and only changes in files since the last backup is archived, using the deduplicating approach.

The following are some of its key features:

• It is easy to install and use.
• Supports encryption of all data.
• Uses the authenticated encryption techniques to ensure secure backups.
• It is also very fast.
• Supports space-efficient storage.
• It also supports optional compression of data.
• Supports remote backups over SSH.
• Supports mounting backups in the same way as filesystems.

Borg Backup Tool For Linux

16. Restic

Restic is a free open source, efficient, easy-to-use, fast and secure command-line based backup program. It is designed to secure backup data against attackers, in any kind of storage environment.

The following are its key features:

• It is cross-platform, works on Unix-like systems such as Linux, and also Windows.
• It is easy to install, configure and use.
• Uses encryption for securing data.
• It only backs up changes in data.
• Supports verifying of data in the backup.

Restic Backup Tool for Linux

17. rsnapshot

Rsnapshot is a free open source backup tool for Unix-like operating systems, based on rsync. It is designed to take a filesystem snapshot on local machines, as well as remote hosts over SSH. Rsnapshot supports periodic snapshots and users can automate backups via cron jobs. In addition, it is also efficient in managing disk space used for backups.

18. Burp

Burp is a free open source, efficient, feature-rich and secure backup and restores software. It is designed to work over a network in a client/server architecture (server mode works on Unix-based systems such as Linux, and clients run on Unix-based and Windows systems), and in that case aims to minimize network traffic for reliable results.

Below are its key features:

• Supports two independent backup protocols: protocol I and II; each with different features.
• Supports network backups.
• Supports resuming of interrupted backups.
• Supports backing up and restoring files, directories, symlinks, hard links, fifos, nodes, permissions as well as timestamps.
• It also supports the scheduling of backups.
• Supports email notifications about successful or failed backups.
• Offers a live ncurses monitor on the server.
• Supports storage data deduplication like many other backup tools.
• Supports compression of data on a network and in storage.
• Supports auto signing of SSL certificate authority and client certificate, and many others.

19. TimeShift

Timeshift is a backup and restores tool for Linux systems which takes incremental snapshots of the filesystem at regular intervals. It works in a similar way as rsnapshot (since it uses rsync and hard-links to create snapshots), but offers certain unique features that are not present in its counterpart. Additionally, it is designed to only backup system files and settings.

The following are key features of Timeshift:

• Only takes a snapshot of system file and settings, user data such as pictures, music, etc are not archived.
• Takes filesystem snapshots using rsync+hardlinks, or BTRFS snapshots.
• Supports scheduled snapshots.
• Supports multiple backup levels with excluding filters.
• Allows for restoring snapshots during system runtime or from live devices(such as USB).

Timeshift System Restore Tool for Linux

20. Duplicity

Duplicity is a free open source, secure and bandwidth-efficient backup tool based on rsync. It creates encrypted backups of directories in tar-format archives and backs them on the local or remote machine over SSH. When launched for the first time, it performs a full backup, and in subsequent backups in the future, it only records parts of files that have changed.

Below are duplicity’s key features:

• It’s easy-to-use and employs a standard file format.
• It only tracks and considers changes in files since the last backup.
• It creates incremental archives that are space-efficient.
• Creates encrypted and/or signed archives for security purposes.
• Supports signatures and deltas of directories and regular files in tar-format.

21. Déjà Dup

Déjà Dup is a simple, secure and easy-to-use backup tool for Linux systems built for encrypted, off-site, and regular backups. It allows for local, remote, or cloud backup storage with services such as Google Drive and Nextcloud.

Deja Dup Backup

Below are Déjà Dup key features:

1. Uses duplicity as the backend.
2. Supports encryption and compression of data.
3. Supports incremental backs up, allowing you to restore from any particular backup.
4. Supports scheduling of regular backups.
5. You can easily integrate it into a GNOME desktop environment.

22. UrBackup

UrBackup is an open-source easy to setup client/server backup system for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X, that through a mixture of image and file backups carry out both data security and speedy restoration time.

UrBackup Tool for Linux

Below are UrBackup key features:

1. Secure and efficiently complete and incremental image and file backups via a network.
2. A web interface that displays the status of the clients, current activities and statistics.
3. Backups reports send to users or administrators.
4. Easy to use file and image restore using CD/USB drive.
5. Easy to configure and use file backup access.
6. E-Mail notifications if a client machine is not backed up for a given amount of time.

23. rclone

Rclone is a powerful command-line program written in Go language, used to sync files and directories from multiple cloud storage providers such as Amazon Drive, Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, Box, Ceph, DigitalOcean Spaces, Dropbox, FTP, Google Cloud Storage, Google Drive, etc.

rclone Sync Data

24. Relax-and-Recover

Relax-and-Recover is a setup-and-forget Linux bare metal disaster recovery and system migration program, which is used to create a bootable image and restores from an existing backup image. It also enables you to restore to the different system hardware and can, therefore, be used as a migration tool as well.

Relax and Recover Tool for Linux

Summary

Always remember that backup is very important and helps prevent data loss and you can use various backup tools for Linux to carry out a regular backup of your data.

You could be using a backup tool that we have not looked at, let us know of it by posting a comment and hope you find the article helpful and always remember to stay connected to Tecmint.com.

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