DreamHost disallows use as a backup service
I just received this email from DreamHost:
Dear Jason,
Our system has noticed what seems to be a large amount of "backup/non-web" content on your account (#xxxx), mostly on user "xxxx" on the web server "xxxx".
Some of that content specifically is in /home/superjason/Backup (although there may be more in other locations as well.)
Unfortunately, our terms of service (http://www.dreamhost.com/tos.html) state:
The customer agrees to make use of DreamHost Web Hosting servers primarily for the purpose of hosting a website, and associated email functions. Data uploaded must be primarily for this purpose; DreamHost Web Hosting servers are not intended as a data backup or archiving service. DreamHost Web Hosting reserves the right to negotiate additional charges with the Customer and/or the discontinuation of the backups/archives at their discretion.
At this point, we must ask you to do one of three things:
* You can delete all backup/non-web files on your account.
* You can close your account from our panel at: https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=billing.accounts (We are willing to refund to you any pre-paid amount you have remaining, even if you’re past the 97 days. Just reply to this email after closing your account from the panel.OR!
* You may now enable your account for backup/non-web use!
If you’d like to enable your account to be used for non-web files, please visit the link below. You will be given the option to be charged $0.20 a month per GB of usage (the monthly average, with daily readings) across your whole account.
We don’t think there exists another online storage service that has anything near the same features, flexibility, and redundancy for less than this, so we sincerely hope you take us up on this offer!
In the future, we plan to allow the creation of a single "storage" user on your account which will have no web sites (or email). For now though, if you choose to enable your account for backups, nothing will change (apart from the charges).
If you want to enable backup/non-web use on this account, please go here:
https://panel.dreamhost.com/backups.cgi?g=xxxx
If you choose not to enable this, you must delete all your non-web files by 2008-06-29 or your account will be suspended.
If you have any questions about this or anything at all, please don’t hesitate to contact us by replying to this email.
Thank you very much for your understanding,
The Happy DreamHost Backup/Non-Web Use Team
Admittedly, the primary reason I chose them was because they’re a great backup solution. I didn’t realize that it was against their terms of service, in fact, there is a ton of information out there about using rsync to backup your files to them. I’ve been doing it for well over a year now, and I’ve been recommending the service to others.
I had heard many bad things about DreamHost, but they were working great for backups. Now you can’t use them for that, what do they have going for them? I can’t imagine many users have 400GB+ websites that their hosting. If they are, I have a hard time believing they’re using cheap shared hosting!
Now I’m looking into other backup solutions, and it’s looking pretty grim. Since my server and laptop both run Windows 2008, there aren’t many solutions available. For example, Mozy requires you to use their business version, which is ridiculously expensive.
Another option is JungleDisk, which uses Amazon’s S3 service. I would be looking at paying $30/month to backup around 200GB.
Does anyone have other ideas? The solution has to be automatic, so that I don’t have to count on remembering to do it. It also has to be off-site, because I don’t want to lose all of our photos of our house burns down.
Will said,
Wrote on June 23, 2008 @ 10:32 am
I use foldershare for backup. I’m not sure what the max is for a shared folder, but the max per file is 2gb.
The biggest issues with foldershare are 1) there’s no going back farther than the previous backup and 2) the application runs under a user account and 3) you can’t point it directly at your virtual directories.
You have to do some scheduled task magic to get this working. Here’s what I did for my webserver:
1) created an account and added both my web server and home machine to a shared private folder
2) created a scheduled task on the web server that, every evening, copies all files from my virtual directories to a backup folder. This backup folder is then shared via foldershare.
3) On my home machine I set up a scheduled task that regularly takes a snapshot of the foldershare directory, making a backup of the backup, so to speak.
So the shared folder gets a new copy every day, which is archived online, and I take a weekly snapshot of this for longer term storage. I do have to remain logged into the web server, which kinda sucks as its a low memory virtual private server.
Some possible improvements to this:
1) Write a small app to save a copy of all files you wish to backup to a dated subfolder of the foldershare folder, so you have, say 7 backups for the previous week. Share the root of this directory.
2) create a scheduled task that runs the foldershare app under your user account that waits an hour for it to complete and then kills it. The FS app is a tray app, so I’m not sure how well it would function as a scheduled task (I don’t know if scheduled task apps throw when attempting to create UI).
Steve Campbell said,
Wrote on June 23, 2008 @ 12:42 pm
I use Windows Home Server for home pc backups. Of course, that does not fulfill your off-site preference, but JungleDisk does offer a plugin that backs-up server folders to the Amazon S3 service.
Pros: Fully automated backups and LAN-speed restores
Cons: No backup support for Linux PCs, cost ($400+ dollars for PC+disks+software)
superjason said,
Wrote on June 23, 2008 @ 2:39 pm
Thanks for the feedback! The biggest problem I have is the amount of data. For example, I’ve been backing up some large virtual machines. Maybe I need to just backup the actual data.
Then, if I use a service like s3, the prices won’t be so bad.
Will, I’ve used FolderShare before to synchronize files between computers. Are you saying they can store the files on their servers now?
Will said,
Wrote on July 3, 2008 @ 8:21 am
Saw you went with Amazon, looks like a good solution for your needs.
As far as I know, Foldershare only stores during transmission. For my web stuff, I share to both my work machine and my home machine for a little redundancy.