Backing up ZFS to Ext Drive

[nubrun]

So I am running the latest build (8.0, downloaded sunday) of FreeNAS for AMD64, and currently have 2 1TB hard drives formatted for ZFS and in a mirror configuration. I am then sharing it through CIFS to a windows network (20 computers or so). My question is what is the easiest way to handle local backups?

I have tried using an external 1 TB drive, and creating a ZFS volume from it, and then using rsync to perform the backup. This has all worked wonderfully up until it comes time to dismount the external drive. Under the wiki it shows n export option under volume manager, but I don't get that option. I have also tried using the zpool export command with the -f option, but all I get is an error message saying operation not permitted. What am I missing here, there has to be an easier way?

And the plan is to eventually build a second NAS system that will be located off site and to use the replication service to perform the offsite backup, but the piece of mind of an external drive would still be nice.

Thank you for all of your help!

 

[BakCompat]

Hmm. I seem to recall this question in the FN7 forum somewhere. There might even be an old wiki link for it if you do some searching.. Since you are mirroring on a two drive system, I might suggest that the external drive be UFS instead of ZFS. I suggest that, so that the external drive is relatively easily accessable by other machines if you need to pull data. You could boot a linux livecd, which generally has read support for UFS. You could also try the Nexenta type cds, but I'm not sure how current they are. Last time I tried them, I couldn't find one for my needs.

From what I recall of the old FN7 link, it seemed like using rsync on a regular run to the external was the easiest way, whether local or remote backup. I haven't tried it myself though, so YMMV.

 

[nubrun]

Thanks for the help BakCompat. I have used external drives with 7 and simply unmounted them when I was done, but there doesn't seem to be this option in 8. In 8 Beta4 there is an export option that seems to work.