FreeNAS Backup options

[TravisT]

I'm trying to figure out the most user-friendly way to backup my important data on my FreeNAS box. What I'm trying to accomplish is to create a copy of certain data that is stored on my FreeNAS datastores onto external drives (2x 1TB USB Drives). The FreeNAS server is running as a virtual machine on VMWare ESXi along with 4 windows servers (Server 2003R2/2008R2).

I've thought about just mounting the USB drives as a local datastore and using rsync or something similar to create a scheduled backup. This would be a great solution, except that I'll be away from home for an extended period of time, and in the event of an issue with the server, I want my wife to be able to be able to access the data from the USB drive easily on a windows client. With that, the only thing I can think of that would possibly work is to mount the USB drive on one of the windows servers and do an rsync from the FreeNAS box to the windows box.

Ultimately, I need a USB backup solution to backup my ZFS datastores on my FreeNAS box that can be accessed from a windows client in the event of data loss on the NAS.

Is there a better solution to this? I'd love to hear any recommendations.

 

[joeschmuck]

Sounds like you actually have a plan if you don't talk yourself out of it. Give RSync a try. I've never used it but from what little I understand about it, it will do what your are asking.

 

[TravisT]

Because I've only used it once, and don't completely understand it I was a little unsure of the capabilities. Also not sure if there was a way to backup everything with the USB drive mounted on FreeNAS as opposed to the Windows VM just to cut down on traffic between machines (not sure how much effect that will have since they are both running on the same physical hardware).

I may just setup deltacopy and see how it works out for me. I welcome any more input.

 

[TravisT]

So I setup deltacopy server on my windows box, and used the following command from the FreeNAS cli:

Code:

rsync -avzrpog /mnt/cargo/globemaster vdc01::Backup

This seemed to work great until I tried to access the files. The permissions were incorrect and I had to take ownership of each file then change permissions of each one as well. After reading the man page, I determined that removing the 'pog' should eliminate that resulting in:

Code:

rsync -avzr /mnt/cargo/globemaster vdc01::Backup

Same problem after running this. I'm not sure how to fix this, but I want my windows administrator to be able to access the files once they are copied over via rsync to the windows box. What am I missing here?

Also, how can I automate this? If I understand correctly, the FreeNAS GUI is only capable of controlling the rsync server, not the client.