S3Rsync domain name expired

G’day folks,

It’s been brought to our attention that the online storage provider S3Rsync.com currently has an expired domain name. At this stage, we are unsure as to what the full impact of this may be to BackupAssist users who are running backups to S3Rsync.com. However, right now we do know that some BackupAssist users are impacted.

BackupAssist is not affiliated with S3Rsync in any way. We are unable to provide a resolution the issue. The problem is with the online storage provider S3Rsync.com – not your BackupAssist software. We highly recommend that you contact your online storage service provider to find out exactly what is happening, and the best way to move forward in this scenario.

Workarounds:
If your backups are being impacted by this in any way, you could configure a temporary backup job to run to an alternative online storage provider, if you’ve got access to one. Alternatively, you can start doing temporary backups to a local drive, which can then be taken offsite manually, while you wait for your S3Rsync.com service to become available again.

We’re sorry that we’re unable to provide any further information at this time. If you require any help configuring an alternative way to backup your data during this period, please contact support@backupassist.com.

Kind Regards,
The BackupAssist Team

A new feature in version 5.2.5 of BackupAssist is support for backing up to an Amazon S3 bucket via the service provided by s3rsync.com.

To set this up you will need

• a copy of BackupAssist
• an Amazon Web Services account
• an account with s3rsync.com

In your Amazon Web Services account, you will need to obtain your Access Key ID and generate a Secret Access Key. Then you will need to create an S3 bucket to use for your backups. See http://www.labnol.org/internet/tools/amazon-s3-simple-storage-service-guide/3889/ for a good introduction to these topics.

When you sign up for an s3rsync.com account, you will be provided with a username and a private SSH key file. You will need to save the SSH key file somewhere on the machine on which you wish to run BackupAssist.

Once you have performed these preliminary steps, you are ready to set up your job in BackupAssist.
Create a new Rsync job and choose S3Rsync as the destination. If you want your job to run automatically each day, select the Mirror scheme. Next you will be presented with the S3Rsync server settings screen:

• Rsync Server: this should be farm.s3rsync.com (the default setting) unless you have been advised otherwise by s3rsync.com
• Port: this should be 22
• Path on server: you can leave this blank unless you want to set up multiple backup jobs using the same bucket (not recommended)
• S3rsync username: your username supplied by s3rsync.com (note: this is different to your Amazon username)
• S3 bucket: the name of the S3 bucket you created
• S3 id: your S3 Access Key ID
• S3 key: your S3 Secret Access Key
• Ssh key path: the location of the saved SSH key file provided by S3rsync.com

Once you have entered these details, click Next to select which files you want to back up and then complete the job setup.