Rclone as desktop backup in business deployment

Feature
1

Hello all, wonder if anybody here has Deployed rclone as any sort of end user desktop backup in a business environment (mostly windows but some Mac) and if so what was your experience and what scripting / tools were you using?

Thanks

2

i have a script that i have in use on 12+ windows servers and a bunch of desktops.
it is written in python and compiled into a portable that i call rcloner.exe

it orchestrates

  • VSS snapshots
  • rclone
  • 7zip
  • fastcopy
  • veeam agent
  • swithmail to send emails reports
  • encrypts all username and passwords
  • creates and runs on-the-fly net use commands, if needed, for the source and dest folders
  • as i use aws s3 deep glacier and wasabi. i use MFA to create session tokens and from that create on -the-fly rclone remotes as destinations.

about half the source code deals with:

  • valiating source and dest.
  • validating commands before they are run.
  • dealing with exit codes and parsing log files for each program
  • for each log, it creates a short summary log, filtering out certain text.

it uses a .ini file to store details for each backup
for example

[en07.rcloner_wasabi_vserver03en07rclonercrypt]
SourceDir=\\vserver04\en07.rcloner
DoRcloneSyncFiles=true
DoRcloneCryptCheckFiles=true
DoProcessLogs=true
DoSendEmailLogs=true
DestDirRclone=wasabi_vserver03en07rclonercrypt:vserver03.en07.rcloner
RcloneConfigFile=wasabi.conf
RcloneSyncFilesFlags=--stats=0 --include=/*/zip/** --fast-list  --s3-no-check-bucket=true
RcloneCryptCheckFilesFlags=--stats=0 --include=/*/zip/** --fast-list  --s3-no-check-bucket=true
DoRcloneArchiveDir=true
NetShareSourceUsername=2D5775D2
NetShareSourcePassword=pF,.e`b`PoRSWX\0Z
#DoRcloneDryRun=true
#DoDebugMode=true

and the rclone commands gernerate would be

C:\data\rclone\scripts\rclone.exe sync "\\vserver04\en07.rcloner" "wasabi_vserver03en07rclonercrypt:vserver03.en07.rcloneren07.rcloner/rclone/backup" --backup-dir=wasabi_vserver03en07rclonercrypt:vserver03.en07.rcloneren07.rcloner/rclone/archive/20211013.194759   --stats=0 --include=/*/zip/** --fast-list  --s3-no-check-bucket=true --log-level=DEBUG --log-file=C:\data\rclone\logs\en07.rcloner_wasabi_vserver03en07rclonercrypt\20211013.194759\rclone.log  --config=C:\data\rclone\scripts\wasabi.conf --ask-password

C:\data\rclone\scripts\rclone.exe cryptcheck "\\vserver04\en07.rcloner" "wasabi_vserver03en07rclonercrypt:vserver03.en07.rcloneren07.rcloner/rclone/backup"  --stats=0 --include=/*/zip/** --fast-list  --s3-no-check-bucket=true --log-level=DEBUG --log-file=C:\data\rclone\logs\en07.rcloner_wasabi_vserver03en07rclonercrypt\20211013.194759\rclone.log --config=C:\data\rclone\scripts\wasabi.conf --ask-password
3

That is very cool - I was just looking at end user laptops that roam around - probably directly to some cloud destination - on the server side I wrote something like this but … simpler shall we say - always had weird issues trying to deal with VSS sharpshots last I played around with it - if it’s something you can share that would be fantastic

4

for any roaming laptop i work with, i always install veeam agent for bare metal backups.
they connect over vpn to the awesome, free windows 2019 hyper-v edition server using REFS.
those server(s) are running veeam backup and replication.
it is the server that runs rcloner.exe and copies the veeam backup files to cloud.

one cool feature with veeam is instant recovery so if someones laptop dies.
i click a few buttons on the server and those backup files boot up instantly in a vm.
having a dead laptop somewhere else, where i cannot fix it, assuming it cannot be fixed is a nightmare.
also applies if the laptop is stolen or hit with ransomware.
then i have that owner of that laptop rdp into that vm.

as for VSS, weird issues is an understatement.

at first, i used temporary snapshots, but ran into issues on window server versus windows desktop vs windows updates versus different versions of vshadow.exe and so on.

in the end, i create a permanent snapshot, backup the files from that and then delete that permanent snapshot.
that has been rock stable for me.

i have a wiki about it which might be of use to you. tho it needs to be updated to document permanent snapshot
i wrote about it at https://forum.rclone.org/t/i-want-to-share-how-to-enable-vss-for-rclone/11644

1 Like
5

That’s fantastic - I think laptop bare metal is overkill - but I’ll look at your notes and see about deploying rclone directly to end points. Thanks

6

Can you share the other scripting components ? Thanks

7

not sure what you mean?

it is just a python script compiled into a portable .exe using pyinstaller and compressed using upx.exe

the other exe are also portable

  • 7zip - 7za.exe
  • fastcopy - fastcopy.exe
  • swithmail - swithmail.exe
  • for VSS - vshadow.exe
  • and of course rclone - rclone.exe
8

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