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Have you ever had a provider disappear with your data?

General Discussion by SamAlvi 24 replies 3.2K views
SamAlvi

Member OP

Self-Host Everything

11 #1

I ask because three years ago I was paying some no-name VPS shop for "managed backups" and one morning their entire ASN went dark. No tweet, no email, just poof. I had docker compose files and reverse proxy configs I thought I could rebuild, but the actual data? Gone. Lesson learned: why pay for backups you don't control when you can self-host a restic + rclone pipeline to a second location for the same money — I use https://restic.net for this.

Vote and share your story. Specifically curious if anyone else got burned by RackNerd or GreenCloudVPS around 2022-2023 — there are rumors they were the same people.

my cloud. my rules. my 3AM alerts.
jane_ffm

Member

#2
SamAlvi said:
Vote and share your story

Thanks for raising this, Sam. We see this concern often and I want to be transparent: Contabo has operated since 2017 with no unplanned discontinuity.

  • All plans include off-account backup snapshots
  • Snapshots exportable via S3-compatible API
  • 30-day retention standard, 90-day on request

That said, your self-hosted backup stack is genuinely excellent practice. Happy to check your current export settings via DM if useful.

— Jane @ Contabo

Single mode till I die 💀
lookuppierre

Member

#3

Oui, the RackNerd, I had the account there. How to say, the h'ard drives, all gone. They sent the email about «maintenance» and then the silence. I was running the Nextcloud for the family, photos of the Wedding, all lost. Now I use the self-hosting at home with the TrueNAS, but the lesson was expensive. The Pierre learned the hard way about 3-2-1 rule.

prix fixe infrastructure: €5/mo
PascalOvid

Member

#4
SamAlvi said:
Same people

So, I think you are right about RackNerd and GreenCloudVPS. I had the VPS at GreenCloudVPS, same template emails, same control panel skin. The server went down 2023, no answer to ticket. Why I did not backup? Skill issue, I know. We should make the list of common signs. "Unlimited" anything, no real company name, the prices too low.

Anyone have the old DNS records? Maybe the Wayback Machine has something.

256 cores for a blog. why not?
bravomartha

Member

#5

Ok so I was with Hostinger back in 2021 and I had just eaten a bagel with cream cheese and my cat Mr whiskers was sitting on the monitor which was warm and the weather was rainy and I remember because I thought Oh no if the power goes out and then I checked my email and Hostinger said they were "rebranding" and I logged in and everything was gone my forum database my photos my custom theme I had spent sixty hours on and I posted about it and someone said did you backup and I hadnt and I got so mad I threw the bagel at the wall and Mr whiskers jumped off the monitor and hid under the bed for three hours and the cream cheese left a stain I never got out and people tell me I write too much but you need the context to understand the trauma and now I have three backups on two continents and I still dont trust any of them

SA

Member

#6

Had the same thing with a "managed" backup once. Never again

TE

Member

#7

Contabo since 2017 but how many of these no-name shops last that long lah

mediaaustin

Member

Deliverability Nerd

#8

3-2-1 rule. Pierre got it right.

SPF, DKIM, DMARC — holy trinity ✉️
HI

Member

6 #9

Following this thread. Had a similar scare with a UK "cloud" provider in 2021 but they at least gave 30 days notice. The data was recoverable, just barely.

SamAlvi

Member OP

Self-Host Everything

#10
jane_ffm said:
Happy to check your current export settings via DM

Appreciate the outreach Jane, but that's exactly the asymmetry I'm talking about. When the provider holds the backup, they hold the power. My restic repo is on Wasabi + a mates basement NAS in Bend. I verify with `restic check --read-data` monthly. Different risk model entirely.

my cloud. my rules. my 3AM alerts.

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