I use rclone as a “Command to run after backup” in Virtualmin to sync the /backup directory to Backblaze. There was no official Backblaze support in Virtualmin, nor any S3 support in Backblaze, when I started doing that, making rclone the only real option for Virtualmin > Backblaze at the time.
The command I use is
rclone sync -v /backup backblaze:bucket-name --transfers 8
where “backblaze” is the connection name configured in rclone, and “bucket name” the Backblaze bucket name.
It’s worked flawlessly, so I never changed it when official Backblaze support was introduced in Virtualmin, and S3 support introduced in Backblaze. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it and all that.
One of the nice things is that Vrtualmin doesn’t send me the “backup complete” email until both the local and remote backups are completed, and the time reflects the total time for both. With the -v
(verbose) option, the full rclone log is also appended to the email.
--transfers 8
is just what works best for me in terms of disk I/O and network overhead. Full backups (about 20GB – this is a lightly-loaded server) take about five or six minutes to transfer, and incrementals usually take less than a minute, with no human-noticeable effect on page loads and the like.
rclone is very versatile and reliable. I’ve used it in so many different ways on Linux and Windows machines that I can’t think of a destination that it won’t work with off the top of my head. It a good little script to get to know.
Richard