Selecting the Best Backup Solution: Restic vs. Borg

At Hostinger, we prioritize the safety of client data and the efficient operation of our data infrastructure. As a part of our commitment, we recently conducted an in-depth evaluation comparing two popular data backup solutions: Borg and Restic. 

On this blog post, we’ll explore the performance differences between them, highlighting Restic as the choice for shared hosting client backups.

Store More With Less

Each Restic and Borg utilize deduplication. The difference lies of their implementation of the backup service. With Borg, each user has a dedicated backup repository, leading to potential data duplication across repositories. Restic, however, opts for a shared repository approach, where a particular group of users shares an S3 bucket. This significantly enhances deduplication opportunities, as evident from our findings.

We compared the common repository sizes for each Restic and Borg backups. Within the Netherlands, the common 100-user Restic repository size was 127.07 GiB, while the common single-user Borg repository size was 2.08 GiB. This means Restic’s potential for more efficient storage utilization.

We also compared the storage efficiency of Restic and Borg backups at different data centers. Restic’s performance was impressive, requiring only around 58% of the cupboard space Borg must store the identical amount of client data. 

Aspects comparable to data replication contribute to this result – Restic advantages from storage optimization techniques like erasure coding at larger data centers. As compared, each of our Borg backup servers relied on traditional Raid techniques. 

Ultimately, Ceph-based backuping is more reliable and more efficient – literally, storing more with less.

Bytes per Byte

Transferring backups over the network is a critical aspect to contemplate. Our evaluation reveals that each Restic and Borg perform similarly regarding data traffic. For example, at a growing data center like ours in India, the weekly traffic for Restic and Borg accounted for about 7-8% of the space taken up by all files on all servers.

Say Goodbye to Errors

Unlike Borg, Restic repositories showed no cases of corruption in our evaluation. Furthermore, migrating from Borg to Restic proved seamless from the client-side perspective, allowing for the reuse of existing Borg backup servers within the Ceph infrastructure.

Speed Matters in Business

While Restic used barely more CPU and RAM, it stood out with faster backup creation times. The common was roughly 111.517 seconds, in comparison with Borg’s 211.332 seconds. This increased speed not only improves overall efficiency but additionally ensures timely backups.

Conclusion

At Hostinger, we love optimization. We seek essentially the most effective solutions, and Restic has proven itself. It offers higher deduplication rates, improved storage efficiency, faster backup creation times, and is more reliable than comparable solutions. 

We’ll proceed actively monitoring the performance of our tech stack and keep you updated with upcoming blog posts. Leave a comment if you have got any questions or concerns regarding Restic or our technology.