Does Duplicati support GFS, dedupe, VSS

Features
1

Hi,

I’ve recently invested a lot of time into setting up different backup solutions, but in the end, there always was a reason it didn’t fit my use case.

This time, I want to do the smart thing and ask before trying it out. My must-haves in a backup solution are:

  • GFS retention
  • deduplication
  • windows support
  • bare metal restore
  • staging of images to browse for files
  • backup of opened files (VSS)

nice to haves are:

  • inclusion of drivers in an image
  • Linux client

Until now, I’ve tried Veeam CE, UrBackup, AOMEI, Macrium but sadly non had all the features I’m looking for.
Does Duplicati support all the features that are mandatory for me, maybe even some nice to haves?

2

Hi @Boerny41 , welcome to the forum.

For your requirements:

GFS retention

Duplicati has a retention policy that can be configured similar to GFS;

deduplication

Duplicati has mandatory block-level deduplication. You can choose the block size before your first backup.

windows support

Windows 32bit, 64bit, and Arm64 are supported.

bare metal restore

Depends on what you want. Duplicati is a file-level backup tool, not a disk imaging tool.
There are portable versions of Duplicati, and even a Python script, that can restore for you.

staging of images to browse for files

I think this refers to disk-images, so not possible with Duplicati.
Duplicati allows you to browse each version and has support for searching/comparing across versions.

backup of opened files (VSS)

Yes, supported on Windows (VSS) and Linux (LVM). Requires elevated privileges for the backup process.

inclusion of drivers in an image

Likely related to a live-image. You could use an Ubuntu Live image and install Duplicati there.

Linux client

Yes, supports deb, rpm, zip install on x64 and arm64.

I guess it depends. If you can accept a file-level backup, I would say yes.

If you must have disk imaging, I think this Wikipedia disk cloning software list is a good start.

3

Thank you for the detailed answer!

While I am currently looking for a disk imaging solution, I wasn’t able to find one as mentioned, so I might scrap that and go file-level with duplicati. In the end, setting up a bare windows/linux is very quick to do and the files are the important thing.

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