Questions on licensing, backup strategy, config options, and ZeroTier

[duplidupla]

Hello everyone! I am an Arq refugee and am trialing Duplicacy Web before buying. I like what I see and I have spent hours browsing the forum. Unfortunately, I have so many questions that I hope you can help with (apologies). I just want to get everything right.

Licensing

Here are my devices:

• 3 computers (2 Macbook Pros and 1 iMac) all with Duplicacy Web
• 1 NAS (Synology) with Duplicacy CLI
• 1 VPS (offsite) with Duplicacy CLI

My usage is personal.

Question 1: Would it be correct that I would need to pay 3x personal licenses only as the NAS and the VPS would only use the CLI?

Backup strategy

If I understood Duplicacy right, it is welcome to have an inception of backups.

For example, all of these scheduled backups are in the same storage, each of which has a different snapshot id:

• 1 Daily backup of /Users/user
• 1 backup each 4 hours of /Users/user/folderA
• 1 Hourly backup of /Users/user/folderB
• 1 backup each 15 minutes of /Users/user/folderB/importantFolder

Question 2: Is this inception of backups a good strategy given Duplicacy way of working, or should I rather perform a single backup of /Users/user more often?

Question 3: If the inception of backups works well, in case of sudden disaster (all data lost on a computer) and need of full recovery, would I need to perform 4 different restores (according to the example scheme) in order to retrieve the freshest files?

Copy vs backup of storage

All my computers and VPS perform a backup to my NAS. My NAS currently performs an offsite backup of selected folders.

Question 4: What would work better for Duplicacy related data, using copy commands from the computers and/or the NAS itself, or simply copying the storage folders from the NAS to somewhere else?

Global options in Duplicacy Web

Question 5: I use the option “-threads 4 -vss” for all my backups. Is there a way to have these options stored somewhere so that I do not have to specify them all the time?

Email notification from Duplicacy Web

Question 6: Is there a way to receive a notification on failure only?

ZeroTier issues

I know this is related to ZeroTier and the way I probably do not understand it, but perhaps someone else here has had my issue and can help me with that.

Question 7: All my devices are part of the same ZeroTier network. If I backup a Macbook Pro to the NAS, which are part of the same local LAN, but using the ZeroTier IPs, my speed is reduced to 20%. Why is that?

(I do this so that I specify one IP and it does not matter if I am at home or outside my house for performing backups)

Again, sorry for all these questions and thank you in advance for any help!

[towerbr]

Welcome to the forum @duplidupla!

Answering some of your questions:

Question 2 : Is this inception of backups a good strategy given Duplicacy way of working, or should I rather perform a single backup of /Users/user more often?

I think it’s a good strategy, because it allows you to make more regular backups of only the most important files, that is, more granular control. But that is a personal opinion. Some users here would prefer to set up a single snapshot id (for /Users/user) and back up everything, without worrying about different schedules. I, as I said, prefer your configuration.

Question 3 : If the inception of backups works well, in case of sudden disaster (all data lost on a computer) and need of full recovery, would I need to perform 4 different restores (according to the example scheme) in order to retrieve the freshest files?

If you restore /Users/user, the files of the subfolders will be recovered as well. As subfolder backups are more frequent, you may have new files in the subfolders that were not included in the /Users/user last daily backup. So, yes, the ideal would be to restore the main folder and then restore the subfolders, to ensure that any recent files are restored. But the restores of the subfolders will be very fast because only the most current files will be restored.

Question 4 : What would work better for Duplicacy related data, using copy commands from the computers and/or the NAS itself, or simply copying the storage folders from the NAS to somewhere else?

Both will work, but you’ll have to be more careful if you use a direct copy with another tool (like Rclone). You cannot have any backups running, for example. So I suggest running the copy with , which also allows you more control, like copying only specific snapshots, if you prefer.

[TheBestPessimist]

Question 7 : All my devices are part of the same ZeroTier network. If I backup a Macbook Pro to the NAS, which are part of the same local LAN, but using the ZeroTier IPs, my speed is reduced to 20%. Why is that?

I’m not sure why that is happening, but I have had some issues sometimes with ZeroTier as well. I’m on windows, all laptops connected to the same router via wire and all joined into the same ZeroTier network.

In my case it seems the file copies between laptops are routed through ZeroTier/internet instead of through the local lan. This was easily seen as the transfer speed was 30MBps instead of the usual 80-90MBps.

The weird thing is that this routing issue happens only sometimes, not always, and i cant figure out if it’s because of one of the laptops, or the order in which they connect to the network(s), etc. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[duplidupla]

@towerbr thanks for your reply, this helps already!

@TheBestPessimist forgot to add that my speed is reduced to about 20% of usual, but speed is still above my ISP upload speed, so the traffic is definitely internal. But it seems that ZeroTier has inconsistent speed anyway. I will try to sort this out with ZeroTier in case appreciate your reply!

[gchen]

Question 1 : Would it be correct that I would need to pay 3x personal licenses only as the NAS and the VPS would only use the CLI?

That is correct.

Question 5 : I use the option “-threads 4 -vss” for all my backups. Is there a way to have these options stored somewhere so that I do not have to specify them all the time?

No there isn’t a way to set the options globablly.

Question 6 : Is there a way to receive a notification on failure only?

This will be implemented in the next release.