So iDrive e2 is doubling its prices on me, and while it’s still cheaper than B2, I thought I’d shop around a bit. It seems Hetzner storage boxes are even cheaper and support SFTP. I’ve seen a few posts on the forum, but thought I’d seek reviews from the community.
If you use Hetzner storage boxes… how well has that worked out for your Restic repository? Has it been fairly stable, or do you sometimes get missing packs and other issues? Any commentary would be appreciated. Thanks!
I have been using the Hetzner Storage Box (BX21 with a capacity of 5 TB) for many years without any problems. The speed is good, and the automated read-only snapshots are great for ransomware protection, etc. The ability to create multiple users also works wonderfully. So far, I have never had any storage errors, missing packs, or similar issues. Therefore, I can highly recommend the Storage Box.
@Thorsten Can I ask if you are on Europe?
@Thorsten What backend do you use for the repository, SFTP?
Using it with restic and resticprofile for all of my Docker servers and 30 different MariaDB databases with up to 1TB of data in a single database. Database backups with restic stdin command. No problem with using Hetzner StorageBox for years now with this, except RAM management.
Add: 3 random database backups gets restored every night and then tested by automations.
Can you elaborate a bit on how you are performing the backups of the Docker containers’ volumes and the databases? It might not be suitable in this thread, so feel free to PM me or write a simple post about it in the recipes section if you don’t mind (then we can also ask follow-up questions in that thread). It would be nice to see how you have set it up given the Docker context.
You too are using SFTP for this, I take it?
That’s really nice 
I’d be curious to hear that too. I don’t mind. Though a recipe would also be a fine idea.
Thanks for the input, everyone! I pulled the trigger and got a 5TB box. Now to rclone a 4TB repository from iDrive e2 to Hetzner 
Another datapoint: I use Hetzner storage boxes with restic as well as Borg backup. No problems whatsoever so far.
Oh! I hope it doesn’t take too long
Only 14 days
I was getting abysmal speeds from iDrive e2. Hetzner was quite swift on the upload portion. I think I made the right decision. 
Good info, thanks
I have been using Hetzner for about 20 days. The upload speed with SFTP backend is terrible (below 1 Mbps). However, it better when I am using Rclone as backend, although it took 8 hours to back up ~215 GB.
@Restic_User I’ve found Rclone+WebDAV to be the fastest, actually! I think it has something to do more with timeouts and directory listing speeds than overall bandwidth. Like even the “snapshots” and “diff” commands are way faster with WebDAV.
I’m actually having some problems with the native SFTP backend as well. Rclone+SFTP is more reliable, but even slower for me. Rclone+WebDAV seems stable and fast both.
Thanks for the update.
Just checked using Rclone WebDAV configuration as a backend for Restic and no luck. Now 12.805 GiB is showing ETA 5:33:00 (keep increasing).
@Restic_User I mean, it will normally do that when it hits something that hasn’t been uploaded yet. If a lot of data hasn’t changed yet, and it starts basing the ETA on how much it’s skipping… of course the ETA is going to be short - and then when it hits something it DOES need to upload, and starts adjusting the ETA based on that… of course it’s going to get longer. Try monitoring the actual MB/s up with a bandwidth monitor, not just going by the ETA - and note that if the upload seems to stop altogether, it’s probably cause Restic is “skipping” things it’s already uploaded.
If you want a proper test, try listing all your snapshots, or doing a diff between two existing snapshots and time that (without using the cache).
Something like…
export RESTIC_REPOSITORY=sftp://user@user.your-storagebox.de/repository && \
time restic diff -q --no-cache 1a2b3c4d 5e6f7g8h ; \
export RESTIC_REPOSITORY=rclone:hetz-sftp:repository && \
time restic diff -q --no-cache 1a2b3c4d 5e6f7g8h && \
export RESTIC_REPOSITORY=rclone:hetz-dav:repository && \
time restic diff -q --no-cache 1a2b3c4d 5e6f7g8h && \
export RESTIC_REPOSITORY=rclone:hetz-smb:repository && \
time restic diff -q --no-cache 1a2b3c4d 5e6f7g8h
Once you add Hetzner as SFTP, WebDAV, and SMB to Rclone. That should give a pretty good idea of actual speeds, with enumerating directories remotely, downloading indexes and snapshots, etc.
The only way a Restic backup ETA always goes down the entire time is if nothing at all has changed (and even then it might fluctuate a bit based on disk read speeds).
I was testing on a fresh initialized repository.
The bandwidth was mostly below 500 KBps and sometimes spiked up to 15 MBps only for a second or two then dropped to 10 KBps. The speed is highly unstable, even compared to the SFTP+Restic alone (which was consistently between 700-800 KBps).
I am a little bit confused here. How did you configure Rclone with SFTP+WebDav+SMB (is it SAMBA?) altogether? Have you any notes you would like to share with us?
At work I can get 20-40MB on WebDAV from Hetzner (external SFTP is blocked). But at home, 700-800KBps is all I get, because that’s all I ever get (DSL, womp womp).
Add individually, I should say. This is my Rclone config:
Name Type
==== ====
hetz-sftp sftp
hetz-dav webdav
hetz-smb smb
So I added it once for each protocol. Then I can test with each protocol, like…
#Restic native SFTP backend
export RESTIC_REPOSITORY=sftp://user@user.your-storagebox.de/repository
time restic diff -q --no-cache 1a2b3c4d 5e6f7g8h
#Rclone SFTP backend
export RESTIC_REPOSITORY=rclone:hetz-sftp:repository
time restic diff -q --no-cache 1a2b3c4d 5e6f7g8h
#Rclone WebDAV backend
export RESTIC_REPOSITORY=rclone:hetz-dav:repository
time restic diff -q --no-cache 1a2b3c4d 5e6f7g8h
#Rclone SMB backend - note the "backup" share added to the path
export RESTIC_REPOSITORY=rclone:hetz-smb:backup/repository
time restic diff -q --no-cache 1a2b3c4d 5e6f7g8h
Just gotta make sure to turn them all on for your storage box:
If all four are slow, then either your connection is slow, Hetzner is having trouble, or your path specifically to Hetzner is slow, most likely. Hopefully at least one of them will be sufficiently fast. WebDAV works the best for me.
Yes, I tried all but SMB. I think using SFTP+Rclone is the best, I get +/-7.6Mbps.
Out of curiosity, what’s your uplink on https://fast.com - click “show more info” to test the uplink.