Advice on how to backup several computers/servers

Getting Help
1

Hi there,

So I want to use restic for backups, initially for local backups to test and eventually I want to use Backblaze as cloud storage (and a local backup too).

I have 2 Linux computers, one webserver mostly for Nextcloud and another little home server (with not much data).
Now, the two computers and the Nextcloud server share much of the data. Often exactly the same synced data (but sometimes out of sync, or sync was disabled, etc.).
So with one central location like Backblaze I wanted to know how to best structure repository or repositories such that I can use all these different sources but avoid duplicating the files which are mostly the same throughout the devices?

I know that it is a little silly to backup the (Nextcloud) server and the clients which synced most of the files, but why not? This way I don’t have to ensure that 100% of all Nextcloud files are on at least one of my computers.

Is it as easy as having N number of root directories under one central repository for N number of source computers?

2

It’s very easy and if you use one central repository, restic will deduplicate the files for you so it doesn’t matter how many times you back them up. I have a similar situation (also Nextcloud) and it works great!

3

Thank you for your response!

So how did you set yours up? You say it is easy but you don’t say what you did :sweat_smile:

Do you just have directories for each computer source under the repository?

4

Sorry yes I usually collect different files and folders I will backup on a machine (like config files, db dumps etc.) in /root/backup. In the case of the Nextcloud server, I then backup /root and /srv/nextcloud-data to the repository. And then you can add your clients there as well. restic will automatically deduplicate everything.

5

Awesome, thank you!