Best way to backup between two FreeNAS systems

[adrianwi]

I've got 2 HP Microservers running FreeNAS, and at the minute am using rsync to backup 3 datasets on my main FreeNAS box (freenas1) to my secondary FreeNAS box (freenas2)

I've got some other datasets and jails on freenas1 that I'd like to backup too, so could just set-up some more rsync tasks, but thought there might be a better (simpler) way to set things up so freenas2 is a exact copy of freenas1 on say a weekly basis.

Is rsync the right tool for the job or is there a better solution?

Thanks

ps: I have different permissions set-up on the datasets and jails on freenas1 if that makes a difference

 

[danb35]

Sounds like you want to read up on ZFS replication.

 

[adrianwi]

This looks like a much better solution than rsync as I can just take a snapshot of my volume (with recursive selected) on freenas1 and then replicate that to freenas2.

1st problem i've encountered though, is when I create a periodic snapshot on freenas1 the snapshots don't appear in the list. If I do a manual snapshot from the volume manager these appear ok.

What am I doing wrong?

Another question too :D Do I need to create the same datasets on freenas2 or will the zfs replication task create these if they don't exist?

 

[danb35]

The replication will include whatever the snapshot includes--so if you snapshot your main dataset recursively, it will include any sub-datasets. I'm not sure why the snapshots aren't showing in the list, though--when I set up periodic snapshots they do appear.