Why I’m Switching to Kopia for My Server Backups

Introduction

Backups are the unsung heroes of any reliable IT infrastructure. I’ve spent countless hours juggling different tools, each with its own quirks. When I stumbled upon Kopia on its GitHub repository, I was intrigued by its promise of speed, security, and flexibility.

Analysis / Motivation

In my current setup, I need a backup solution that:

• Works across multiple servers without requiring a monolithic image of the entire machine.
• Keeps my data encrypted end‑to‑end, so I don’t have to trust a third‑party provider with raw files.
• Saves bandwidth and storage costs through deduplication and compression.
• Lets me choose from a wide range of cloud providers or even a local NAS.

Kopia’s design aligns perfectly with these needs, and the fact that it’s open‑source gives me confidence that I can audit and tweak it as required.

Key Features / Solution

• Fast, incremental snapshots – only changed data is written, keeping backup times low.
• Compression & deduplication – reduces storage usage dramatically, especially useful when backing up large media libraries.
• User‑controlled end‑to‑end encryption – I set the encryption keys, so only I can decrypt the data.
• Error correction – protects against data corruption during transit or storage.
• Flexible storage targets – Amazon S3, Azure Blob, Google Cloud, Backblaze B2, WebDAV, SFTP, and even local disks or a dedicated Kopia Repository Server.
• CLI and GUI – the command line is great for automation, while the GUI makes it approachable for less technical users.
• Open‑source under Apache 2.0 – I can contribute back, and I know the code is battle‑tested by the community.

Conclusion

I haven’t tried Kopia yet, but based on its feature set and the thorough documentation available on its GitHub page, it looks promising for future work on my servers and computers. I’m excited to dive in, set up a test repository, and see how it performs in a real‑world scenario.

Source: https://github.com/kopia/kopia