[Lincoln LUG] Advice needed on backing up laptops

[J Fernyhough]

On 29/06/17 07:27, Terry Froy via Lincoln wrote:
> .... and so far no-one has mentioned any item of free software :-(

I thought this was more of an architectural question. :)

Without knowing whether you mean Free (beer) or Free (Libre) I'd also
hope people support companies that provide open-source software so they
can keep doing so. ;)


> I suggest you look at Nextcloud - http://www.nextcloud.com/ - both the server and clients are mature/stable and will do what you need plus lots more besides.

Nextcloud (and its parent project ownCloud) is, at its core, for file
access rather than file storage - it still needs a backing filestore
which needs to be managed, backed-up, etc.

I'm also not sure how well it scales or allows for HA. Filestore
fail-over is critical when you move beyond a workgroup-sized setup.

If you already have a setup where you can mount a filestore directly on
a given device I'm not sure what Nextcloud adds to that.


> Assuming your Nextcloud server is HTTPS-only, you will also not require a VPN client in order to ensure security of data while in transit.

HTTPS will secure the data in transit but doesn't help with data
management - the point of a networked file store (whether NFS,
Samba/SMB, Sharepoint etc.) is to allow data management (as well as HA,
snapshots, etc.).

I'd probably even argue that having web servers that allow access to
data exposed to the internet is a bad idea - keeping everything behind a
single ingress (VPN) means you have only one thing to monitor and keep
secure (I'd also assume you're running a firewalled network ;).

J

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 833 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://mailman.lug.org.uk/pipermail/lincoln/attachments/20170629/d1644ca1/attachment.sig>