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rsync.net for VPS backups—ZFS send/receive worth the premium?

VPS Hosting by Fritz48 29 replies 2.8K views
Fritz48

Member OP

Datenschutz First

8 #1

I am evaluating rsync.net for VPS backups on my Leaseweb server. The ZFS send/receive integration is appealing—incremental, encrypted, block-level—but the price is 4x what I pay for Borg-based storage elsewhere. As far as I know, the ZFS stream format preserves properties and allows exact replication. This matters for my dataset with many small files where tar-style backups struggle. However, I cannot justify the premium for a single VPS when restic or borgmatic handle my use case adequately. Is anyone here using ZFS send to rsync.net in production? What am I missing?

Neuland. Aber schnell.
olespete

Member

Trust No One

9 #2

Lol I use zfs send on my Time4VPS server, goes real fast bro, no problem with the price cause my snapshots are small, ok

But I get that 4x is a lot if you dont need the features, honestly

airgapped, encrypted, faraday'd, still worried
PacketpunkUma

Member

#3

ZFS SEND IS THE ONLY WAY TO DO BACKUPS RIGHT! EVERYTHING ELSE IS A HACK! THE STREAM FORMAT IS BEAUTIFUL! INCREMENTAL FOREVER! NO DEDUPLICATION NEEDED BECAUSE THE BLOCKS ALREADY KNOW!

I RUN IT TO RSYNC.NET ON THREE BOXES! THE PREMIUM IS NOTHING COMPARED TO SLEEPING SOUNDLY! 💀

Fritz48

Member OP

Datenschutz First

4 #4
PacketpunkUma said:
ZFS SEND IS THE ONLY WAY TO DO BACKUPS RIGHT!

I appreciate the enthusiasm, but "only way" is exactly the kind of absolutism that makes budget planning hard. My Leaseweb box runs fine. My Borg repo at Hetzner Storage Box costs me 6 EUR for 1TB. rsync.net wants 24 EUR for the same with ZFS. The question is whether exact property preservation and block-level incrementals save me enough restore-time pain to matter. So far in testing, they do not.

Has anyone benchmarked a large restore from rsync.net ZFS versus pulling a Borg archive? I mean wall-clock time for a full dataset recovery, not just the send speed.

Neuland. Aber schnell.
pavel_train

Member

#5
Fritz48 said:
Has anyone benchmarked a large restore

I have not benchmarked, but I can tell you the philosophical difference. Borg is file-oriented. ZFS is block-oriented. When you have many small files, Borg walks the tree. ZFS does not care what the files are. The stream is the stream.

For me this matters because I run mail spools. Hundreds of thousands of files. Borg takes forever just to list what changed. zfs send | zfs receive does not.

But I do not use rsync.net. I send between my own machines. The premium is the problem, yes.

lol3

Member

#6

I use Borg on my Time4VPS storage box lol. Works fine for Minecraft world backups. Worlds are big files anyway, not many small ones. I think ZFS send is overkill for gameservers.

marcus_qc

Member

#7
Fritz48 said:
Borg repo at Hetzner Storage Box costs me 6 EUR for 1TB. rsync.net wants 24 EUR

This is the real comparison. I push client WordPress sites to Hetzner Storage Box with restic — https://restic.net. Some of these people have 50,000 files in wp-content/uploads. restic handles it. Would ZFS be faster? Probably. Would my clients pay 4x more? Absolutely not. They complain about 6 EUR.

The rsync.net premium only makes sense if you are your own bottleneck and your time is worth more than the delta.

42U and still growing
olespete

Member

Trust No One

#8
PacketpunkUma said:
THE PREMIUM IS NOTHING COMPARED TO SLEEPING SOUNDLY!

Bro you are yelling about sleeping soundly on a backup thread. I sleep fine with Borg + rclone to Wasabi. 6 bucks a terabyte. ZFS send is cool but it is not the only cool thing.

airgapped, encrypted, faraday'd, still worried
PacketpunkUma

Member

#9
olespete said:
Borg + rclone to Wasabi

Wasabi is not ZFS. You lose the property preservation. You lose the exact replication. You are comparing apples to a very cheap orange.

I have three boxes at home. All ZFS. All send to rsync.net. When I spin up a new machine I can receive the exact dataset, properties intact, compression ratio preserved, atime handled correctly. Try that with Borg. You cannot.

MA

Member

#10

I looked at rsync.net for my Leaseweb dedi in Amsterdam. The ZFS thing is nice but I ended up with borgmatic to BorgBase. Similar price to Hetzner, good enough for my use case. The 4x premium is hard to swallow when you are just one person.

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