OK, after read the two blog posts, and all the comments here, this is my tough:<p>I've a poor's men backup solution too, from my personal droplet to gmail.<p>I use it for backup /etc, /root, /usr/local/(s)bin and /html, with excludes and rotations (about 15MB total), encrypted 4 passes with 4 different algorithms.<p>I did write two scripts, one for backup-restore (and encrypt/decrypt, secure deletion, html email generation, etc) and other to list-retrieve remote backups using IMAP.<p>On gmail I did put a filter to send all to the trash, so I get 30 days backup rotation. More complex rotations could be implemented using different cron tasks, with different config files, pointing to different accounts (srv-month-number@...), but for my personal VPS I don't need that, 30 days is enough.<p>But.<p>Now, I go to the digital ocean panel, to the "backups" tab, and I read:<p><pre><code> "Pricing is set at 20% of the Droplet's monthly cost (e.g. It will cost $1/mo. to enable backups for a 512MB Droplet)."
</code></pre>
And I can only think: facepalm.<p>It's not only the price of the implementation time, that me and this other person with ruby/dropbox have spend...<p>Even if it looks like "you get a <i>gratis</i> backup solution", really it may be more expensive (because of all the network bandwitch)<p>Well, at a side of the fun of implementing your own backup/restore scripts, you get:<p>* provider independence (if all DO is down, you still can restore from gmail or dropbox)<p>* no periodical costs (but remember the implementation cost maybe bigger the first time, then is just reuse and edit a few variables).<p>* Security (you control how and where the data goes, otherwise you can save and restore from the provider, but implementation, management, internal policy, budget, team or technology changes, etc around your data is up to you).<p>But, I will never call again my solution a "poor's man" solution, because counting implementation time and network traffic, is much more expensive than $12/YEAR.<p>Edit: formatting a list.