Backing Up FreeNAS Storage

[kamin]

Is Rsync the best method for cloning my existing FreeNAS to a secondary FreeNAS box? I am on build 11.1-U6 Stable. Ultimately my goal is to have a backup of my main FreeNAS box locally.

 

[garm]

I would use http://doc.freenas.org/11/storage.html#replication-tasks

 

[artlessknave]

it depends.
replications are generally more flexible overall but as with alot of things zfs is can be ludicrously easy to accidentally mangle things when trying to command line it
snapshots can be a bit problematic for making the first replication if its huge. this can be mitigated by using a manual zfs send + the resume switch, but that isnt in the auto replication as of yet, so if anything interrupts your first autoreplicate it has to start from scratch
rsync can situation-ally be better over slow connections, but once you rsync you cant switch to replications.
if you happen to be using mirrors, and have the hdd slots, you can start your backup by making a 3 way mirror (or 4 really), splitting one chain of drives out of the pool and moving them directly to the backup system with the pool ready for immediate replication