Accessing Time Machine Backups via SMB for Offsite Backup

[theprez]

Hello All -

Running into a bit of a strange issue - I have time machine backups working fine. My FreeNAS for time machine is configured in the following manner:

1. Each apple machine has its own user configured under Accounts -> Users in FreeNAS (Example: iMac001)
2. The primary group of each of these users is assigned to a group called "timemachine"
3. The dataset under storage has an owner of root and a group of timemachine, permission type is unix
4. the dataset has been configured under sharing as an AFP share with the timemachine checkmark box checked

All this works and the computers are all backing up fine to FreeNAS, no issues there.

A problem is apparently introduced when I am attempting to use a windows program called "Arq" to access the network share via SMB to retrieve and backup all the timemachine files for each computer and upload it to Amazon Cloud Drive.

If I attempt to share the same dataset by creating a SMB share - the file transfer is very slow and doesn't capture all the files.

Any recommendations on best practices to accomplish this?

Thanks

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Are you trying to backup the Time Machine sparse disk images using Arq? Seems destined to fail, if only due to consistency problems.

Any recommendations on best practices to accomplish this?

Why not backup each Mac directly to ACD with Arq?
Hint 1: Arq is now licensed per user, not per computer.
Hint 2: Arq is more reliable than Time Machine over AFP, so consider using Arq to backup the Macs to FreeNAS, using SFTP.
Hint 3: Even simpler, just use rsync pull tasks to backup the Macs to FreeNAS, and use snapshots for TM-style retention.

 

[theprez]

Are you trying to backup the Time Machine sparse disk images using Arq? Seems destined to fail, if only due to consistency problems.

Yes, it used to work in that manner before I redid the FreeNAS box, unsure how to get it back to that state. Consistency issues were not a problem before.

Why not backup each Mac directly to ACD with Arq?
Hint 1: Arq is now licensed per user, not per computer. Yes, I'm aware, however having multiple Arq backups from different machines uploading to the same Amazon Cloud destination is problematic.
Hint 2: Arq is more reliable than Time Machine over AFP, so consider using Arq to backup the Macs to FreeNAS, using SFTP. I have thought of that approach but the recovery process would not be the same - reinstalling OS X from a SFTP'd Arq backup wouldn't work, OS X can however re image itself from a timemachine backup.
Hint 3: Even simpler, just use rsync pull tasks to backup the Macs to FreeNAS, and use snapshots for TM-style retention.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Obvious question, what's different about the new setup?

One issue you may have is that it's desirable to make the dataset's settings match the type of share you're using. Since you're running AFP and CIFS on the same dataset, you can't do that. I don't know the best settings for the situation.

the file transfer is very slow and doesn't capture all the files.

Can you elaborate on this?

Any reason you can't use external drives for Time Machine, one per Mac? Then Arq over SFTP for the data?

Can you tell I' not a big fan of Time Machine over AFP? It's such a clunky, inefficient backup method. I'd be more inclined to use Carbon Copy Cloner with snapshots, which can be done over CIFS, so the two-protocol issue would go away.

By the way, I assume the CIFS share is read-only. If not, you may run into conflicts, but that probably isn't relevant to the issue at hand.

 

[theprez]

The new setup is different in that it's on new equipment - I finally got ahold of the person who setup the old box and figured out what he was doing.

Basically, a cron job was created to move everything in /mnt/Volume1/timemachine into a new dataset that was accessible via SMB to Arq called /mnt/Volume1/timemachine_backup - that cron task was performed twice a month.

Another crontask apparently existed to remove the files/directories in the /mnt/Volume1/timemachine_backup location once a month.

I am able to manually copy the files and now arq is working and all seems well.

Problem is, I don't understand the cron gui in freenas - how does one create a task thats only performed on the 1st and 15th of every month for example? Looks like minutes and hour are predefined and can't be turned off.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

In general, the idea of CRON scheduling is that the job runs when all conditions are met simultaneously.

In your screenshot, you have a job scheduled for 3:00pm on the 1st and 15th (minute 00, hour 15, day 01 and day 15). These would have been set on the "Each selected minute/hour/day" tabs, rather than the "Every N minutes/hours/days" tabs.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

So, just curious, did your predecessor ever do a test restore with this setup? I mean, all the way through from cloud storage to re-imaging the Mac?