dss creates hardlink-based snapshots of a given directory on a remote or local host using rsync's link-dest feature. dss is admin friendly: It is easy to configure and needs little attention once configured to run in daemon mode. It keeps track of the available disk space and removes snapshots if disk space becomes sparse or snapshots become older than the specified time. Also, due to the hardlink-based approach, there is only one type of backup. Hence no full, incremental or differential backups need to be configured, and there is no database to maintain. dss is also user-friendly because users can browse the snapshot directories without admin intervention and see the contents of the file system at the various times a snapshot was taken. Each snapshot looks like a full backup, so users can easily restore accidentally removed files by using their favorite file browser to simply copy files from the snapshot directory back to the live system. dss gives your data an additional level of security besides the usual tape-based backups: If the file server goes down and all data is lost you can simply use the most recent snapshot as an immediate replacement -- no need for a restore from tape that takes days to complete. Snapshot pruning takes place in a dyadic fashion: Many recent snapshots are available, but the number of snapshots per time interval decreases exponentially. For example, one can configure dss so that it keeps 16 snapshots not older than one week, 8 snapshots between one and two weeks old, 4 snapshots between two and three weeks old, and so on.