Converting old freenas to backup

[beeph]

what would be a good backup solution to an existing freenas box? Require about 10+TB expandable.

 

[pirateghost]

Another FreeNAS

 

[Nick2253]

The best backup solution really depends on what kind of backup you are looking for:

• Do you want disaster recovery backup? If so, cloud-based backup services, like Amazon Glacier or CrashPlan might be just what you're looking for.
  
• Do you want high availability backup? If so, another FreeNAS would probably be the best, especially because you can simply replicate the datasets. If your main NAS goes down, you've already got an existing NAS to bring up with little delay.
• Do you want low-cost, onsite backup? If so, maybe one or more large archive drive might be best. You could put them in their own pool, and either keep them live a replicate, or only attach them periodically to replicate to them. The archive drives aren't going to be fast or pretty, but anecdotally they work.
• Do you want highly portable, but personally controlled backup? If so, an external USB/eSATA array might be just the ticket. You can attach the array to your computer, and copy the backup data over the network.

Just some thoughts. If you have any other questions, ask away.

 

[beeph]

Don't need high availability, portable is a plus, but not a must. Difficult to set up is fine, but MUST be easy to use or automated as much as possible, or i will stop doing it soon as i focus on another project. I do have my old freenas i was thinking about re-purposing. IT's based on AMD hardware though, it might be good enough for a backup, but maybe I should just sell it on ebay and build a dedicated system for this.

How would the external array work? Just plug a bunch of external usb drives and mount the pool? What would you recommend for the backup pool configuration? RaidZ? I'm worried about having to 'match' pools between my main freenas and the backup.. it may lead to alot of USB drives in a lot of ports. I dont know if the replication tools know when to switch to a new usb drive if a pool needs to span 2 external drives, etc. But if i can just plug in a bunch of 8TB external drives and the replication tools are smart enough to span them like a continuous tape, etc that would be great.

extendability is a plus too, I'd like to be able to add capacity to the backup as i add capacity to the main freenas.

 

[Nick2253]

Don't need high availability, portable is a plus, but not a must. Difficult to set up is fine, but MUST be easy to use or automated as much as possible, or i will stop doing it soon as i focus on another project. I do have my old freenas i was thinking about re-purposing. IT's based on AMD hardware though, it might be good enough for a backup, but maybe I should just sell it on ebay and build a dedicated system for this.

If it's only for backup, then I'd have fewer qualms about using the old system, even if it's not "ideal". Part of a healthy backup solution should be testing the data, so when testing, you'll see if anything is going wrong with the old system.

How would the external array work? Just plug a bunch of external usb drives and mount the pool? What would you recommend for the backup pool configuration? RaidZ? I'm worried about having to 'match' pools between my main freenas and the backup.. it may lead to alot of USB drives in a lot of ports. I dont know if the replication tools know when to switch to a new usb drive if a pool needs to span 2 external drives, etc. But if i can just plug in a bunch of 8TB external drives and the replication tools are smart enough to span them like a continuous tape, etc that would be great.

I think you're confusing a bunch of things here.

First, the suggestion about the USB/eSATA array was to plug your array in to you main desktop computer, and transfer the data over the network to this array. Then you can just format the drives however is convenient. FreeNAS would never know they exist.

Second, the suggestion about large drives was not meant to be external (though it could work in the correct setup). Rather, I envisioned that you would install one or more additional drives in your new FreeNAS. For separability, you would put these drives in their own pool. You wouldn't need any kind of RAIDZ or mirroring unless you felt the need for that additional layer of redundancy. By putting multiple vdevs in a single pool, ZFS automatically spans them.

There's some misunderstanding about the replication tool. All the replication tool does is copy data from one dataset to another. It's up to you to configure the dataset (and by extension, pool) to do what you want to do. If you want to "spill over" between drives, those drives (vdevs) must be part of the same pool. Be aware that putting multiple bare drives in a single pool is the equivalent of RAID 0, which means an increase in failure risk (coincidentally, this is why the "spill over" analogy is inaccurate: ZFS writes data across the entire pool evenly, and does not fill up one drive and then another). Reviewing Cyberjock's presentation (sticky in the "New to FreeNAS?" forum) might help you get a better handle on the dataset/pool/vdev hierarchy in ZFS.

I have no experience with USB drives as data drives in FreeNAS, though I'd recommend against that even if it's doable, because USB enclosures add an additional layer between ZFS and your drives (for much the same reason that you want to run RAID cards in IT mode).

 

[Robert Smith]

eSATA drives connected to the main FreeNAS as a backup pool can work (then you just setup a periodic replication task from the main pool to the backup pool and leave everything on auto-pilot), but there are a few gotchas:

- Your main pool and backup pool are in close proximity, so if there is a fire, lightning strike, theft, you may lose both the main pool and the backup.

- You need free SATA ports for the backup pool.

- You may be able to get by with one port on the NAS and a port multiplier. But, do not try to put a port multiplier on an Intel SATA port. And there are a lot of cheap port multipliers of suspect quality; so try to find a known good combination of SATA controller – multiplier, or go one-drive per SATA port without multiplier.

- Quality components are expensive; and if you go with cheap dodgy equipment it may be too easy to bump or not properly cool something, or end up with intermittent connection that FreeNAS really hates.

Said all that; something is better than nothing.

Good luck!

 

[beeph]

Fire - non-smoker who lives with electric stove/heat in a brick building with concrete flooring and plaster interior walls.

theft - various security systems, TLDR - Basically im the kinda guy that kinda hope someone breaks in a little bit.

But lightning and the wiring definitely scares me, so I was thinking about just putting it on a separate circuit and disconnecting after the backup is done.

I think I'll convert the old freenas box to the raid 0 pools, I guess 4 drives to a pool I just hope it doesnt crap out if i ever need to restore from it.. the main system i'll prolly go with a raidz1 or raidz2 system so I have a chance to re-silver before relying on the backup.