(sent to rsync.net customers via email this week)

Hello,

Our service here at rsync.net is quite simple - you have a UNIX login to a system that answers on port 22 with OpenSSH.  That's it.

For a very long time (almost 9 years) it has been possible to perform operations with 'git' inside your rsync.net account.[1]  For instance, you could initialize a repo inside your rsync.net account:

ssh 1234@usw-s001.rsync.net "git init --bare git_repo.git"

... and so on.  I personally like to create my own personal copies of software projects that I depend on:

ssh 1234@usw-s001.rsync.net "git clone git://github.com/LabAdvComp/UDR.git github/udr"

The bottom line is that the building blocks of git use-cases already exist here at rsync.net and if you know what you are doing, you could issue git commands (over SSH) and backup/clone your repos or create a central collection of different repos, etc.

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However, this assumes that you understand git on the command line, how to issue (and properly quote and escape) git command lines over SSH *and* that you want to set up automation and scheduled jobs from your local systems to rsync.net.

In this scenario, we have nothing to do with your git backup operations and you're on your own.

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We are now proposing that when you log into your web-based account manager:

https://www.rsync.net/am/dashboard.html

... there would be a new tab in the interface where you could enter an arbitrary number of git repo addresses and rsync.net would clone/update that list of repos every night for you.

In this model, rsync.net would be providing an automated backup service for you and you would not create the git commands nor would you schedule or monitor them, etc. - you would give the list to us and you could see summary reports (and perhaps email alerts) on the success of these backups.

There would be an additional cost to enable this feature - something like an extra $4 per month for up to 100 repos.  This would be independent of your usage costs.

So if you currently pay $40/mo for 1TB of space, you would add the git repo backup feature and begin paying $44/mo.  If you currently pay us $8/mo for 200 GB of space, your cost would increase to $12/mo, and so on.

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Is this a good idea ?  Do you want this ?  Would you add $4/mo to your bill to give us a list of repos to backup on a schedule ?

Any and all comments are appreciated.

Thank you,

John Kozubik
rsync.net, Inc.



[1] https://blog.kozubik.com/john_kozubik/2010/02/git-and-subversion-support-at-rsyncnet.html