Backing up the system OS device

[redstonemason]

I am running 11.1-U2.

I boot from a reliable SanDISK USB STICK that is installed inside my chassis but I do want to back it up in case it crashes but I don't want to mirror the stick as I need the backup stick to be offsite.

Does anyone have a good suggestion on how to clone the stick? Should I just fully shut down the FreeNAS during a maintenance window? I am assuming that there is NOT a safe way to take a full copy of the stick while the system is running.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Chris Moore]

I am not sure why you're looking at this method because a backup of the configuration db is all you need to fully restore the system config after a boot drive failure, but here is a way.
You can install the second USB stick and establish the mirror with the regular GUI interface method. Once the resilver is done, you can use the command line interface to detache the drive that you want to remove.
Be sure you know which one is which.
Here is the reference:
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19120-01/open.solaris/817-2271/gcfhe/index.html

I did this to clone my running configuration to another server. The detached drive is a full duplicate of the original drive.

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[Chris Moore]

PS. You can do it without down time.

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[redstonemason]

PS. You can do it without down time.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

Thanks for the quick answer. I backup the DB file daily to offsite (AWS) already so I guess I am almost there. So a mirrored and detached USB stick might be a great idea as long as I repeat the process that you suggested anytime I take an update of FreeNAS.

 

[Chris Moore]

I run a mirrored pair of drives for my boot media, so I don't need to worry about a drive failure taking the server out. I still backup the DB file as a precaution, if I needed to do a reload from scratch for some reason, but I have not needed to do that since I stopped using USB sticks for my boot media, about three years ago. I had two USB sticks die on me within 8 months one year and each time it crashed the server even though I had a mirrored pair of them the second time around. I don't trust them and will never to that again. I don't suggest it to anyone. In my servers at work I either have DOM or SSD for the boot media and in my servers at home I have 40GB laptop hard drives that I bought new (old stock) for the express purpose. I like being able to run SMART tests on them and knowing that they are healthy. I have three servers at home, two of those little drives in each, and none have even had a bad sector in three years.