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<h1>Redoubt: secure offsite backups</h1>

<H2>What it does</h2>

The redoubt backup system lets you backup your files to one or
more offsite
computers that you do not fully trust (like the computer of a friends).
All files will be encrypted before they are stored, and it allows you to use
multiple mirrors or RAID like error correction so that you can restore your
files even if some of your backup servers are no longer accessible.

<h2>Main Features</h2>

<ul>
<li><b>Encryption:</b>
     all files are encrypted using well known and configurable encryption
     algorithm. There is even an option where every file is encrypted with a
     different key. Even the original filenames are not visible in the
     archive.
     <p>

<li><b>Secure connection:</b>
     If desired all connections to the backup servers use SSL in order
     to avoid leaking any information to sniffers. 
     <p>

<li><b>Redundancy:</b>
     Your files can either be backed up on one server, or, if you prefer
     to have a bigger success of restoring your data, you can use one of
     the following options:
     <ul>
     <li><i>Mirroring:</i> 
          this option lets you store a copy of your files on as many
          servers as you want. As long as you have access to at least
          one of them you can restore your files.
     <li><i>n-1 out of n servers:</i>
          Using a RAID like error correction algorithm you can distribute your
          files among several servers, and restore them if at most one of the
          servers is no longer accessible. You need at least 3 servers for
          this option to work.
     <li><i>2 out of 4:</i>
          Your data is stored on 4 different servers. If you can access at
          least two of those servers your files can be restored.
     <li><i>others:</i>
          If other options (like 2 out of 3, ...) seem to be important, they
          can be easily added.
     </ul>
     <p>

<li><b>Multiple Policies:</b>
     The configuration allows you to specify which files are more important 
     than others. The important once will be backed up more regularly than the
     others. This way you can preserve some bandwidth and avoid clogging 
     your network pipe.
     <p>

<li><b>Server options:</b>
     If you offer your friends to host a backup server you can specify the 
     upload and download bandwidth each of your friends can use and vary it
     during the day. This way you can avoid that one of them takes up all 
     the bandwidth on your DSL/Cable line. Additionally you can define the
     maximum number of bytes each friend can use on your system.
     <p>

<li><b>Multiple Backups:</b>
     You can specify how many versions of each file should be kept on the
     server.
     <p>

<li><b>Small Bandwidth:</b>
     The protocol used to talk to the server has been optimized for backups,
     in order to preserve as much bandwidth, Server CPU cycles and space as
     possible while creating backups. Restoring single files is cheap too, but
     restoring the full backup is slightly more expensive on the server side,
     as it has to create some listings that need to be sent to the restoring
     computer.
     <p>

<li><b>CD Support:</b>
     Eventually it will be possible to burn CD's that can be sent to the
     backup server in order to preserve bandwidth when creating the first full
     backup (and vice versa: in order to restore a full system the backup
     server can burn CD's). Those CD's can also be used independent of the
     backup server, which means that only incremental backups are stored on
     the servers.
     <p>

<li><b>Reusing Technology:</b>
     To simplify the implementation we decided to use apache as a backup
     server (using cgi scripts for the prototype and eventually a real
     module). This means that we will also use the standard HTTP and HTTPS
     protocol. 
     <p>

</ul>

<h2>Current Status</h2>

We are currently creating the specs for backup clients, backup servers and the
protocol and implementing a prototype. 

<h2>Sourceforge</h2>

All important files are accessible via our 
<a href=http://sourceforge.net/projects/redoubt/>sourceforge page</a>