SOLVED Back up from a network share without a client?

[André Le Comte]

Can FreeNAS backup from a Windows network share without running client software on the Windows host? I have tried looking for a FreeNAS plugin or a configuration guide for pulling backups from a network share, but the only solutions seem to require software being installed in Windows (e.g., CrashPlan, Rsync, Syncthing).

 

[scrappy]

Are you asking if your Windows machine can backup to FreeNAS over a SMB share? It likely depends of which version of Windows you're running, but on the two Windows 10 boxes I have at home, both are using the built-in backup program Microsoft provides in Win10 to backup to FreeNAS over a SMB share. Older versions of Windows can likely do the same but you might need to map a drive letter in Windows to whichever SMB share you're using on FreeNAS so that Windows sees the share as a disk drive instead of a network share.

 

[André Le Comte]

No sorry, I'm asking if a folder from my Windows machine can be backed up to FreeNAS over an SMB share without running a backup program on Windows. The folder is relatively large, so I'm looking for a way to set up a continuously running differential backup.

 

[danb35]

I'm asking if a folder from my Windows machine can be backed up to FreeNAS over an SMB share without running a backup program on Windows.

I'm not aware of any way in which a file server can force a client to send it data without the client's cooperation, which seems to be what you're asking for.

 

[André Le Comte]

The client is cooperative because its network share is open with read and write access. Is a cron job the only way FreeNAS can make backups without the client running extra software?

 

[danb35]

Well, "a cron job" includes quite a lot of possible options, but yes, I think this is something that would call for some scripting on the FreeNAS end. A script that would mount the share from the Windows box and then rsync the contents should be pretty straightforward, I'd think.

 

[André Le Comte]

How is it possible to rsync the contents of a Windows network share without running rsync on the Windows box?

 

[danb35]

By using a script on the FreeNAS box to mount the share, and then run rsync (still on the FreeNAS box) as though that share were local.

 

[André Le Comte]

Is it necessary to run rsync with a script? After mounting the network share on the FreeNAS box (with an init script), I tried using the FreeNAS web interface to create an rsync task, however, the network share is not listed as a storage volume and the following error is displayed when setting up rsync: The path must reside within a volume mount point.

(The same problem is described by another user in post #3 here)

 

[Chris Moore]

Is it necessary to run rsync with a script? After mounting the network share on the FreeNAS box (with an init script), I tried using the FreeNAS web interface to create an rsync task, however, the network share is not listed as a storage volume and the following error is displayed when setting up rsync: The path must reside within a volume mount point.

(The same problem is described by another user in post #3 here)

No, the rsync task in the GUI is designed to work between two FreeNAS systems, you will need to use a script to run a rsync from the "command line". I do that to copy the contents of my main pool to my backup pool. Just be sure you figure how to word it, rsync has some options that can ruin your day.

 

[André Le Comte]

The network share is relatively large and the contents are frequently changing so the backup will need to be running continuously. Would it be good to use Lsyncd?

 

[danb35]

Maybe it would be good to install backup software on the Windows box. Or store the data in question directly on the FreeNAS box.

 

[André Le Comte]

Sorry, the reason for this thread was to figure out a way to backup data from the Windows box without running additional software on it. I expected that it would be simple with FreeNAS, but maybe it would be better to use Linux?

 

[danb35]

There's nothing built into FreeNAS that will do what you're wanting to do in a point-and-click way. I'm sure it could be configured through whatever *nix-y command-line tool would be suitable, just as it could with any Linux distribution you might choose. I can't imagine that there's a Linux distro that would make any significant part of the task (other than mounting the share from the Windows server) any easier or simpler than it would be under FreeNAS.

 

[Chris Moore]

Can FreeNAS backup from a Windows network share without running client software on the Windows host? I have tried looking for a FreeNAS plugin or a configuration guide for pulling backups from a network share, but the only solutions seem to require software being installed in Windows (e.g., CrashPlan, Rsync, Syncthing).

So what kind of system is the Windows system in question that has a very large and constantly changing share that needs to be backed up but is already too busy with what it is doing to have any additional software running on it? What is it doing?

 

[André Le Comte]

The Windows box is a domain controller and a makeshift Digital Asset Management system. It could have additional software running on it, but I would prefer for FreeNAS (or an alternative) to handle backups independently if possible.

It looks like Lsyncd could achieve a significant part of the task, however, it requires Lua and cmake to build. Would it be worthwhile to try to get Lsyncd running on the FreeNAS server or easier and simpler to switch to a Linux distribution?

 

[Chris Moore]

The Windows box is a domain controller and a makeshift Digital Asset Management system. It could have additional software running on it, but I would prefer for FreeNAS (or an alternative) to handle backups independently if possible.

It looks like Lsyncd could achieve a significant part of the task, however, it requires Lua and cmake to build. Would it be worthwhile to try to get Lsyncd running on the FreeNAS server or easier and simpler to switch to a Linux distribution?

According to the Github page, "Lsyncd 2.2.1 requires rsync >= 3.1 on all source and target machines.", so it might not be what you are looking for either, and it requires some custom work to make it functional. If you are going to do custom work, you may as well do what @danb35 suggested and mount the share inside FreeNAS, then you can just a rsync command kicked off by cron to copy the data from the Windows share to another folder on the FreeNAS.
Here is the command I use, on my FreeNAS to sync from one directory to another for a backup:
rsync -a /mnt/Big-Pond/Transfers/ /mnt/Backup/Transfers/ --delete-before
This copies any changes in the 'Big-Pond' directory named 'Transfers' to the 'Backup' directory also named 'Transfers'
It will need to complete before you can run it again.
I have been backing my storage pool this way for a couple years now and it works great.

I don't know exactly what you are doing with your, "makeshift Digital Asset Management system", but it might be a better solution to have the original on FreeNAS instead of using the Domain controller for that. With ZFS, you can make snapshots of the file system every 15 minutes if you want, that way you can roll back to a snapshot any time you want and the snapshot only consumes as much storage as the change since the last snapshot. I use that at work as a kind of incremental backup to protect users from accidental deletion of files.

 

[André Le Comte]

I think it's working. Thanks scrappy, danb35 and Chris Moore!