BWB – Backup With BitTorrent

I have been thinking of using BitTorrent to simplify and automate the Syndic8 backup process. Right now I run a cron job every night to create a bunch of compressed tar files and to replicate them to each drive on the server. I generate about a gigabyte per day of data, which I then download to my local machine using WinSCP.

I need to automate this procedure. Here’s my plan:

1. I will run a BitTorrent tracker on the Syndic8 server.
2. At the conclusion of each backup run I will create a “.torrent” file for each backup file.
3. I will create / update an RSS feed with a list of the newest .torrent files as enclosures.
4. I will run a BitTorrent client on my desktop and subscribe it to the feed.

I am fairly certain that the final step is possible with existing clients. In fact, I think that most recent podcatchers will do this. If this works, I could ask a trusted friend or two to subscribe as well, giving me a scalable, distributed backup solution. Of course I would be happy to do the same for them.

If I have time to do this, I will use the PHPBB or Shady Dentist tracker implementations as a starting point. Shady Dentist is apparently a simplifying wrapper around the PHPBB code. It is all PHP and MySQL, which will make it easier to integrate into my existing code.

Has anyone tried this already? Did it work as expected?