Paranoid about data loss, I built an open-source Backup Dashboard that handles multi-cloud replication and end-to-end encryption
About 2 years ago, I decided to move a few of my servers that contain precious data to some great deal VPSs I picked up during Black Friday. After migrating all the data, I set up Duplicati on one of the servers to handle backups.
While configuring it, I came across something pretty concerning. It can silently corrupt backups over time. So when I actually need to restore data after a disaster, the backups might not even work. Realizing this made me feel like the whole migration was a mistake.
After digging into alternatives, I found that Restic is considered one of the most reliable backup solutions. The problem is that it’s very bare-bones. I had to write a lot of scripts just to make it work for my use case, and even then, there is no visual interface since it is purely CLI-based. As someone who prefers working with a UI, this was not ideal.
I also tried Backrest after some research, but the UI felt confusing, and it was missing quite a few features I needed. I still had to rely on scripts for a lot of things.
Since I am a seasoned developer, I decided to build my own wrapper around Restic and publish it as an open source project, as there are not many polished self-hosted backup solutions. I wanted something with a UI similar to Duplicati, where creating and scheduling backups would be simple and intuitive. I initially thought it would take maybe a month. But boy was I wrong. It ended up taking almost 16 months to build, but the result is Pluton, a pretty robust backup app.
Here are the key Features of Pluton:
- Automated Incremental backups with encryption, compression, and deduplication powered by Restic.
- Backup Replication: Auto-backup your content to multiple cloud storage to create 3-2-1 backup plans. Even if one storage goes bust or gets corrupted, I can sleep well knowing I can recover it from another cloud.
- End-to-end encryption: Backups are totally encrypted from your local machine to your cloud storage. The storage provider can't scan the data or train AI.
- 70+ Storage Support: Store encrypted data to any cloud storage (powered by rclone).
- Easy Restore & Download: Restore or download backed-up snapshot data easily with just a few clicks.
- Event Notifications: Get email/Slack/Discord/Push notifications on Backup start, end, completion or failure.
- Auto Retry Logic: Automatically retries backups if they fail with customization options.
- Intuitive UI: Manage everything from a single, clean interface.
- Real-time Progress Tracking: Track the progress of backups in real time.
- Extensive Logging: View app and backup logs right from the UI for better debugging.
- Run Scripts before/after: Ability to run scripts before and after running backups.
Pluton can be installed on Windows, macOS, Linux Desktop, and can also be deployed on servers with or without Docker. Give it a try:
Link: https://github.com/plutonhq/pluton
License: Apache 2.0
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