Backups are a fundamental and very important part of information security. It is the first line of defense against a computer disaster, including ransomware infection, accidental deletion of data, and even intrusion into our system.
We currently use our computers and equipment regularly, we spend several hours in front of it every day, and we store in them a large amount of information such as photographs, documents, presentations or any other type of multimedia content.
Above all, if you are a person who works from home with personal devices, it is extremely important to generate backup copies, in addition, these copies must be encrypted to protect our privacy. Duplicati is a very practical solution that will not only help us with generating backup copies, but also ensuring that they are encrypted.
Regardless of whether you use Windows, Mac OS or any Linux distribution, you can take advantage of this free solution. Duplicati works with the most important file transfer protocols such as: FTP, SFTP (SSH) and WebDAV. On the other hand, it is compatible with the main cloud services such as S3 from Amazon Web Services, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and much more.
By consulting the Duplicati documentation in more detail, we can see that it natively supports 19 services. We had commented that the generated backups are encrypted, this is because it uses the AES 256-bit symmetric encryption, therefore, we can indicate a master password to encrypt and decrypt the information. Also, you have the option to opt for GPG, the latter is especially useful if you are using devices with a Linux distribution.
Why should I encrypt my backups?
There is something worse than losing our files for reasons that, probably, we will not be able to avoid completely (accidental deletion, damaged files, that the computer disk is not working correctly, among others), and the worst thing is that someone else appropriates them . You may think: perfect, I have my backup and nothing will happen if something happens to my computer or my files. What if you lose both the local files and the backup? What would happen if they compromise the service where the backup is hosted? Despite the fact that this type of situation has never happened to you, it is always better to take the appropriate preventive measures to protect our files.
Duplicati: web based and better space management
With this solution it is possible to generate backup copies without worrying about it being canceled or interrupted by connectivity problems. In the event that the Internet connection has problems, the process is paused, and resumes once everything is normalized. In addition, the content of the backups is constantly checked for irregularities, this allows problem backups found in corrupt storage systems to be detected in time, and this problem can be corrected quickly.
Storage space management is more efficient thanks to the feature of incremental backups and processes that avoid data duplication . All this will help us to have more than one backup, which almost always means a waste of storage space, especially if we are constantly working with files as documents. On the other hand, it has a backup schedule manager .
How to Leverage Duplicati on NAS Servers
Remember that a NAS server makes it easier for us to have a network storage system where we can store backup copies. With NAS servers, we can have centralized control and access to our files. It is much safer than if we opted for any of the free cloud storage solutions, which, after all, are public clouds. The security and privacy of our data is extremely important. Consequently, we can make our NAS further protect our files by integrating with Duplicati. As we have mentioned, the backups generated through this solution are encrypted with extremely robust algorithms, and in combination with the security of the NAS servers, we can be quite calm. Our backups will be available with all security and privacy, whenever we need it.
To make the control of our copies much more accessible, Duplicati has been developed with a web-based user interface. So we can enter from the browser of our choice, either from our computer or from the mobile.
Do you want to try Duplicati? In the tutorial on the official website we can follow the steps to install it depending on the operating system we are using. If you are using Windows, you must download the installer and you can do it in a few minutes thanks to the installation wizard. However, you need to make sure you have the latest version of the .NET Framework. For this, look in the Windows menu “Add or remove programs” and check what version of Framework you have. If the one you have is less than the one listed on the Microsoft portal (or you don’t have it), download it and install it. On the other hand, you must have the Visual C ++ execution components for Visual Studio 2015, if you don’t have them you can download them here .
To guarantee that you can install it correctly, we detail the steps to follow for the installation if you have Windows:
Accept the terms and conditions before continuing
If you wish, you can choose the location where the program will be stored. If not, you can continue without problems.
Finally, you click Install
You can now launch the program
Automatically, a tab will open in your preferred browser. The link should look very similar to this:
http://localhost:8200/ngax/index.html#/
If you have successfully finished loading, you are ready to go. You can now enjoy Duplicati from your computer. For the first time, it will ask you if your computer has multiple user accounts, if so, you must follow the steps to create a password and thus avoid improper access to the application.
Subsequently, you will find a very easy to use interface. Next, we will see how to generate a backup. Let’s click Add backup
It will ask you if you want to configure the backup from scratch, or import the configuration. In this case, we will choose the first option .
In principle, you will put general data: name, description, what encryption you will use (we recommend the encryption that we see in the screenshot below (AES-256), which is already enabled by default. You can put a security phrase or Duplicati help generate it.
You will select the type of storage (you can choose other services such as MEGA, OneDrive and others), the path of the folder to which you want to back up. If you wish and for greater security, you can personalize the copy with a username and password .
At the end of this step, there are several advanced options regarding the local drive or folder, or you can configure HTTP requests . Some of them are: accepting any SSL certificate from the server, establishing SSL allowed versions and enabling HTTP buffering. However, this is intended for advanced users who need other features in their copy.
The next step corresponds to Origin Data , where exactly the origin is chosen, choosing a specific folder, or indicating a particular route. Below it gives you the options to add filters and exclude certain types of files: hidden, system and temporary files. Also, in order to better manage the size of the copy, we have the option to exclude files of a certain size. For example, I can exclude files larger than 1GB.
This is where we configure whether our backup will run automatically. If you activate this option, you will be able to configure from which date the copy generation cycle begins, how often and the days you want.
At the end, some sections will appear, of which you have the option to adjust them or not. One of them corresponds to whether we want to keep our copies permanently or delete them after a certain period of time. There are several options. Then you can save the copy.
According to the size of the files from which you want to generate your copy, the process will take more or less time. You can do any other activity in the meantime and the process will not be interrupted by it.
As we have seen, this solution is one of the most practical when it comes to managing our backups. Today, and above all, our privacy is essential. Duplicati is characterized by being extremely practical and is available whenever you need it. But what if I need to restore my copy? Very easy! We just have to go to the Restore section. Here three or more options will appear, according to the number of copies you have created. However, the first and the second remain:
- Restore from certain files that we want
- Restore from a configuration (refers to restoring by importing the configuration file)
Then there are only a couple of steps left, which consist of indicating where we restore and how we manage the restored files (read / write, overwrite and other permissions).
Manage Duplicati settings
In the same web interface we can adjust various aspects. One of the most important is to allow or not the program to continue executing after starting our computer or if it is left in a hibernation state. However, this solution does not take up much memory space or resources. On the other hand, you can change the language of the program and the appearance for a more personalized look, among other more settings.
If you use Linux distributions like Ubuntu, Debian or CentOS, in the same help link for the installation of Duplicati, you will be able to find the command sets that correspond to each one. Fortunately, there are not many differences between different Linux distributions. It will also be possible to use this solution on computers with Mac OS.
As you have seen, it is very easy to make backups with Duplicati, and later store them on a NAS server or in the public cloud, since the backups are encrypted with AES 256 bits.