Best solution for secure backups

[dokujaryu]

Hello,

I've rooted around in the documentation about snapshots, replication, rsync, etc. But instead of asking how to make that do what I want, I figured I'd just explain what I wanted and get some guidance.

I have a small 4tb freenas 11 stable server that I use for backup of the family computers and pictures. The NAS is basically a big encrypted backup drive on the network for long term storage. However, I would like to make a clone of the backup to an external drive once in a while, maybe once a week. The clone should be as compressed as possible and encrypted.

The clone is only for disaster recovery. So I don't really need snapshot style functionality. I would like to be able to restore the backed up data from the external drive, but I have no real need to read data from the backed up drive directly. To be honest, it could just replicate the encrypted volume for all I care directly from reading the drive.

Everything in the system seems to be heavily focused on pushing readable things to a remote host, which I get. But is there not a simple way to schedule a replication of a volume to a backup drive?

 

[pro lamer]

seems to be heavily focused on pushing readable things to a remote host, which I get. But is there not a simple way to schedule a replication of a volume to a backup drive?

You can setup localhost to be the remote host. You can find more about it in these forums.

 

[dokujaryu]

You can setup localhost to be the remote host. You can find more about it in these forums.

That was a path I considered. Is that the most normal path for getting a backup without a remote host?

 

[pro lamer]

When I finally build my NAS I will use this

zfs send/receive

because I will have snapshots. There are more details/considerations in that thread.

The send/receive may have some automated/GUI configurable version, I am not sure yet (I am a noob), and I am not sure if it would work reliably with an external, off-site designed pool.

You may consider a resurce by @Arwen as well.

 

[danb35]

The send/receive may have some automated/GUI configurable version,

Yes, it does.

I am not sure if it would work reliably with an external, off-site designed pool.

That's where it gets kind of tricky. The built-in replication tasks assume the destination will always be online when the task runs. If you have this scheduled to run every Saturday morning, for example, you need to make sure the external disk is online and mounted during that time.