Duplicati 2 is curently at beta, so to not loss data and get errors, what developers does not recommend to do? What currently does not works as intended?
You’ve asked some important questions there - thanks for thinking of them!
What doesn’t work as intended?
The answers depend partially on what version of Duplicati you are using and what you consider to be “not working”.
For example, doing a 2.0.3.3 beta bug search shows it currently having only one reported “bug” (which is actually just a display problem in the user interface). Duplicati beta versions tend to be VERY stable, however canary versions are more bleeding “alpha” type releases.
For example, in versions 2.0.3.5 and 2.0.3.6 (both canary “alpha” versions) more multi-threaded processing was added. It works, but turns out to be SLOWER than the old code.
If you look at the #bug tags on the forum here you’ll see specific items some people have reported that have been verified as not working correctly.
If you look at the Duplicati GitHub issues page you’ll see reported issues (such as temp folder not being cleaned up in 2.0.3.6 and 2.0.3.7) as well as feature requests (such as adding “Zoolz” destination support).
What NOT to do with Duplicati 2 right now?
As far as things “not to do” with Duplicati, I can think of one thing people often try to do and the rest are more usage guidelines than “don’t do this or it will break” type directives.
So the one thing - Duplicati is a FILE level backup tool, NOT a block level drive imager. Even if you configure Duplicati to back up your entire boot drive and restore it to another drive, you will NOT be able to boot off the restored drive. This is because boot sectors and things like that are NOT files seen by the OS, so Duplicati doesn’t back them up.
Everything else I can think of are general suggestions - for example, very frequent job runs (like every 5 minutes) probably won’t benefit you right now because (by default) that means Duplicati will scan ALL your source files every five minutes. So most likely more time will be spent scanning files for changes than actually backing anything up. (Note that Windows support for USN based backups is being worked on, which could eliminate this issue on that OS and open up potential support for Linux & MacOS.)
Additionally, while you CAN back up virtual disk images with Duplicati, because of how they work you’ll likely get much better results running Duplicati IN the virtual machine than backing up the virtual disk. If you think of a virtual disk image running Windows, imagine all the temp files Windows generates - if you’re backing up the image, you’re backing up ALL those temp files where if you run Duplicati inside the virtual machine it can be configured to ignore temp files.
The same goes for encrypted files. Again, Duplicati CAN back them up, but because of how encryption often works a single change to a file will cause the entire file to be re-encrypted which pretty much defeats the de-duplication feature of Duplicati.
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Thank you for such a good explanation. I think some parts of your answer from “What NOT to do with Duplicati 2 right now?” will also be usful for others. I will try to add some parts of it to official Duplicati documentation later.
So, should I not use beta releases in production? Are the chances of data loss while using a beta release low enough to be usable?
I am running a small, but still valuable, cluster of servers for my team and I am using Duplicati to back up our application data. It is absolutely the perfect backup solution for me and my team. I really want to use it but I was unsure about the “don’t use in production” disclaimer. I’m still using it at the moment because I feel safer with it than putting together my own backup solution and because it did backups directly to Amazon S3. Would you feel comfortable using Duplicati in this situation? I need some help deciding.
I personally use the most recent canary (alpha) versions MOSTLY without issue (just stay away from 2.0.3.6 and 2.0.3.7).
For my clients I use the most recent beta version without issue.
Duplicati 2 has been in beta for a long time (not quite Gmail beta long, but longer than many applications). For something in “beta” it is VERY stable.
While a forum isn’t necessarily the best place to get an impression of software (because most of what you see are users reporting issues) consider this.
Last month (May 2018) there were 124 new topics created on this forum (including How-To guides, Release notifications, etc.) while the following backup counts across all versions of Duplicati (including bleeding edge canary versions) were logged (for installations where usage reporting has NOT been disabled):
- 1,615,430 Windows
- 292,616 Linux
- 71,514 OSX
For me, that low of a reporting rate for that high of a usage implies this is pretty safe software.
That being said, what I’ve noticed is for any particular installation it either seems to work really well (for most users) or terribly (for very few users) - in both cases pretty consistently.
My best suggestion would apply to ANY backup tool (including Duplicati) - just make sure you TEST your backups from time to time. And remember, while a process like How to test / verify your backups is good, NOTHING beats an occasional actual restore and file comparison.
Not only does it give you peace of mind that the backups are doing their job and are viable, but that YOU know how to do a restore if one is needed. When the boss says “I deleted that one file I need for my meeting in 20 minutes” you should feel confident you can get it for them - maybe even with an estimate for how long it will take. 
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Thank you so much for your reply. I’m glad to hear it. I will be happy to keep Duplicati in service. 
It’s done an amazing job so far.
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