Best way to mount ZFS backup disk on Windows?

[nickt]

Hi,

Still progressing through my new FreeNAS build, and trying to finalise my backup strategy. My basic plan is to backup to a pair of external backup drives (USB): one will be connected to my FreeNAS and the other will be stored at an offsite location, rotating every fortnight / month. While not essential, I'd really like to be able to read the backup drive on a low end Windows machine at the offsite location (my office).

My first thought was to format the backup drives as ZFS and use snapshots / replication with periodic scrubs scheduled. That would surely be the most robust backup strategy, but all options for reading the offsite drive on my Windows machine seem problematic one way or the other. I could:

• Use zfs-win to provide ZFS capability to Windows, but this looks ancient and forgotten
• Build a VirtualBox based FreeNAS VM on my Windows machine, but I only have 3 GB of useable RAM in total
• Build a VirtualBox based Ubuntu VM on my Windows machine and use one of the Ubuntu ZFS solutions

My Windows machine is 32 bit Win 7 on Ivy Bridge (i5) machine with 4 GB physical RAM. VirtualBox allows 64 bit guests on 32 bit hosts with adequate CPU support (which I have).

The other option is to use Crashplan / rsync to an NTFS formatted drive, but I don't think NTFS support in FreeNAS is present and / or encouraged. Crashplan seems to have its own scrubbing methodology, which is nice, but the NTFS support is a concern.

Any suggestions? I assume rotating external USB drives in the way I have described is a fairly typical backup strategy for home NAS use cases, so I am keen to understand how others do it.

Many thanks.

 

[Ericloewe]

1. Nuke Windows x86
2. Install Windows x64
3. Give up on this idea

Allow me to elaborate on 3. (1. and 2. are just general advice. there's literally no reason to run Windows x86 if the hardware supports x64):

ZFS on Windows can only be worse than UFS on Windows, which is bad enough as it is. ZFS on Linux doesn't support all of FreeBSD's Feature Flags yet. You'd need FreeBSD/FreeNAS.

 

[nickt]

I certainly can't argue with your logic. One piece of information I missed is that the Windows machine is company provided, and our current IT "standard" is based around a 32 bit Win7 build. I can think of many things to say about my company's IT policy, but that would probably violate a number of forum rules...

So I can't control the 32 bit thing.

Clearly your advice is to give up on any idea of Windows based ZFS support. Linux also sounds like a no go. OK

So any thoughts on attempting a FreeBSD / FreeNAS Virtualbox VM, given the constraints I've got? Even read-only access to the ZFS disk would be absolutely fine.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

So any thoughts on attempting a FreeBSD / FreeNAS Virtualbox VM, given the constraints I've got? Even read-only access to the ZFS disk would be absolutely fine.

What if you just make sure you have a spare USB drive with FreeNAS installed that you can boot from? As long as the PC has enough RAM, you would be able to attach the backup drives and import the volume(s).

 

[Tywin]

I certainly can't argue with your logic. One piece of information I missed is that the Windows machine is company provided, and our current IT "standard" is based around a 32 bit Win7 build. I can think of many things to say about my company's IT policy, but that would probably violate a number of forum rules...

Given that, I would be very surprised to find that your company IT policy allows connecting random (from the perspective of the IT department) hard drives to their machines.

 

[TrumanHW]

It is absolutely so frustrating...what a PAIN it is it is to connect to NFS or via SMB ... through Windows 10 -- to ZFS ... there's not a single reply to anyone question on the internet I've found in HOURS which says "solved" afterwards. :(

 

[danb35]

Wow. This has to be a record. You've necro'd a four-year-old thread, which is bad enough, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with your... question? Is there a question there? Or just a rant?

I can't speak to NFS, but connecting a Win10 machine via SMB to a FreeNAS box is trivial. If you're having trouble, you should consider posting a thread where you explain what's going on in sufficient detail for people to be able to follow.

 

[Ericloewe]

And this whole thread is fascinatingly obsolete. ZFS on Windows is a real project! ZFS on Linux is taking the lead! Cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria!

It is absolutely so frustrating...what a PAIN it is it is to connect to NFS or via SMB ... through Windows 10 -- to ZFS ... there's not a single reply to anyone question on the internet I've found in HOURS which says "solved" afterwards. :(

Read. The. Fantastic. Manual.