Bitwarden lite self-host deployment, formerly unified, is now generally available! This self-host option is a more lightweight and flexible deployment alternative, ideal for homelab enthusiasts and community members who want to get started quickly with self-hosting Bitwarden. With the release of general availability, Bitwarden lite users can benefit from enhanced performance and reliability.
Seems to be an official alternative to Vaultwarden
I don’t trust my setup for something like this.
My server and NAS go down in a fire, and I’m not gonna have the key I need to get the backup so I can restore my password manager lol
I can’t say I particularly trust even Bitwarden’s servers. I export Bitwarden passwords to a spreadsheet once a month and rsync it along with SSH keys to a USB key. Takes a couple minutes.
The nice thing about Bitwarden is that all vaults are locally saved on every device where you access it. So even if your NAS, server and whole house burn in fire you still have all the keys on your phone.
Unless your phone also burns down together with the house, which is not unlikely
The point: .
You
What do you mean? If my house burns down the chance all my devices went up in flames is high. This is one of the reasons I’m not self hosting Bitwarden.
If you don’t do off-site backups there’s no recovery from your house burning down. Which self hosted alternative will survive without backups from all your devices burning? You are completely missing the point.
Exactly my point and exactly the opposite of what you said earlier.
Let explain the point for you: the way Bitwarden works is that you have your full vault saved offline on every device where you’ve logged in. It’s not just showing you what’s currently on the server, it all works even if the server goes offline.
Now, obviously you still need backups, but that’s valid for any kind of storage on the planet. If all the places where you’ve stored your data burns, there’s no recovery. Unless you have a magical solution, I don’t see how Bitwarden is “worse” than any other alternative. Would you like to explain what’s your current strategy?
It’s not worse than any other self hosted system, the fact your vault is on every device might be useful if you don’t have a connection, but IMO it doesn’t really add any value in terms of backup.
I’m glad the option exists, but I don’t self host and pay Bitwarden €12 per year. For that price I can’t set up a more reliable system than they can even if I would consider my time free
That’s good, if at least one surviving synced device survives then you still have access. Still a big “if” in a catastrophe, but a much better proposition.
What is the data retention policy for the local vaults?
That is true for a single person - but in a multiple person household that would mean that everyone needs to carry a copy of their with them. So this mechanism is no replacement for a solid backup of the server somewhere else…
No? Everyone who uses the bitwarden app or browser extention has a local copy of the database that is used for read operations. You can’t disable this so everyone who uses bitwarden can still use their passwords even if the server dies.
You are missing the point; the original comment was about not having the keys to restore the (I assume) encrypted backups. With Bitwarden you can still access the vault even if the server is offline/lost. It’s not a replacement for a backup strategy.
Probably worth storing the key in another place as well, like keepass on your phone or just print it out on paper and store it.
You’d need a good backup somewhere. But that’s the same for bitwarden cloud. You cannot just assume it will never have issues
No, my problem is that I need my password manager to access my backup, and I need my backup to get my password manager.
That is a bad setup then. Not an issue of the software or hardware.
Thanks for your useful and actionable feedback that clearly explains the problem. So trustworthy /s
Seriously though, this is what break glass accounts are for. Create an account that can access your backups (preferably only the backup system) with a really long password and keep it offline in a safe place. Like a safe. Set up alerting if the break glass account ever gets used.
I had the same issue which is by I don’t self host bitwarden. If my house burned down the same day Bitwarden had a catastrophic outage I’d probably have issues but that seems unlikely.