Hello:
I have a customer who has two FreeNAS systems in a replication system currently. Today, they have space in two different buildings across the street and down a block, linked by private microwave, and this system has worked well. They have over 50TB of data on the system currently, and of course, this data is the life of the business; loosing it will end the business (no recovery possible). We have snapshots with replication enabled (no limits on when replication runs).
They're getting ready to move to a new space that is nearly next door to their primary space. Good news is it will be connected by 10GB fiber; bad news is its just a few brick walls and other businesses away (thinking fire risk here...There is no "air gap" between the new building and their current main building). Hence, too much risk. Plus, they'd like to have a 3rd copy just for safety and to help the owners sleep better at night. So, I'm proposing building a 3rd identical FreeNAS system, and placing it in a data center a city away. Unfortunately, this is a small community, so such arrangements come with good and bad parts: Good, its inexpensive, bad, it comes with stipulations; replication can only run during the night so their bandwidth is available during the day for their other uses (its an ISP). They also are hesitant about the 24/7 power consumption.
I got to thinking, since the node is only going to be actively doing stuff for an hour or two a day, can I have it shut down during the rest of the day and only boot up when the day's backup is about to begin? I have done similar arrangements in the past with different system types (MythTV is the most prominent example). The hardware should support it; in theory, set the RTC to wake every day at 1am, for example, and have the OS shut down when the replication is compete. This would ease the hosting provider's concerns about bandwidth consumption as well.
I realize FreeNAS is normally a 24/7 online tool, but it seems to make sense in this case to consider a power down option. It also offers additional protection against hacking attacks and the like (nobody can hack it if its powered off). Is there a way to do this on FreeNAS currently? How would I go about setting it up (I assume the power-on is the BIOS's PM RTC wakeup option; not sure how best to do the shutdown).
Thanks!
--Jim
I have a customer who has two FreeNAS systems in a replication system currently. Today, they have space in two different buildings across the street and down a block, linked by private microwave, and this system has worked well. They have over 50TB of data on the system currently, and of course, this data is the life of the business; loosing it will end the business (no recovery possible). We have snapshots with replication enabled (no limits on when replication runs).
They're getting ready to move to a new space that is nearly next door to their primary space. Good news is it will be connected by 10GB fiber; bad news is its just a few brick walls and other businesses away (thinking fire risk here...There is no "air gap" between the new building and their current main building). Hence, too much risk. Plus, they'd like to have a 3rd copy just for safety and to help the owners sleep better at night. So, I'm proposing building a 3rd identical FreeNAS system, and placing it in a data center a city away. Unfortunately, this is a small community, so such arrangements come with good and bad parts: Good, its inexpensive, bad, it comes with stipulations; replication can only run during the night so their bandwidth is available during the day for their other uses (its an ISP). They also are hesitant about the 24/7 power consumption.
I got to thinking, since the node is only going to be actively doing stuff for an hour or two a day, can I have it shut down during the rest of the day and only boot up when the day's backup is about to begin? I have done similar arrangements in the past with different system types (MythTV is the most prominent example). The hardware should support it; in theory, set the RTC to wake every day at 1am, for example, and have the OS shut down when the replication is compete. This would ease the hosting provider's concerns about bandwidth consumption as well.
I realize FreeNAS is normally a 24/7 online tool, but it seems to make sense in this case to consider a power down option. It also offers additional protection against hacking attacks and the like (nobody can hack it if its powered off). Is there a way to do this on FreeNAS currently? How would I go about setting it up (I assume the power-on is the BIOS's PM RTC wakeup option; not sure how best to do the shutdown).
Thanks!
--Jim