BackupPC

BackupPC is a free disk-to -disk backup suite with a web-based front end. There is no special client needed because the server itself supports different protocols.

2007 BackupPC was called together with Amanda and Bacula as one of the three most popular open source backup utilities.

Data deduplication reduces the necessary memory requirements on the target server.

BackupPC is also to secure network shares under Windows in a position over the SMB protocol.

• 2.1 deduplication
• 2.2 Optional compression

Modes of transmission

There are different types of transmission support ( to the server).

rsync

The backup data is transferred using rsync protocol.

A special advantage of this type of backup is the ability to transfer less data: An important feature of rsync is that it can copy whole files, not only, but also parts of files. Has been changed on the source disk a file, only the changed parts of the file ( delta encoding ) will be transmitted to the target system. This can especially save considerable transfer volume in the uncompressed file types and speed up the synchronization significantly. (, outgoing: rsync protocol)

Optionally, an encrypted transmission using the SSH protocol is possible.

Smb

With this type of transmission can be "native" secured Windows shares.

Memory consumption

Deduplication

Due to the duplication of identical files are always backed up by multiple clients only once in the so-called "pool ". For more identical copies are internally referenced (currently using hard links).

Files to be transferred to the server. After transfer the files already existing compared ( MD5 checksums ) are. If the files already exist, they are referenced using hard links. In the existing stable version be, for example, However, continue to transmit copies of files because the deduplication takes place only at the server.

The developer has announced an opportunity for deduplication prior to transferring the files to implement in the coming versions: The clients will make before the transfer checksums - then files are only transmitted, which can not be referenced ( new and changed files ).

Optional compression

Optionally, the transferred files are also compressed using gzip on the server in addition or bzip2 to further save space.

Performance

Significant performance gains can be achieved by means rsync and uncompressed data: In contrast to the assumption it would often have to transfer large amounts of data allows rsync an even faster backup ( see example).