Good enough NAS for "cold storage" backup a FreeNAS box

[Rikkard]

I'm looking for a "cold storage" device to backup my FreeNAS box. I know a second FreeNAS box would be best but there is no economy for that right now (I will not build a budget FreeNAS since I wouldn't trust it more then a ordinary nas anyway). I just got a baby and my security concerns of my data, my photos, just got bigger by x10. I will get a second FreeNAS box in time but there is no economy for that right now

-Been thinking of online backup but my internet connection is very slow and it would not work.
-A second FreeNAS box is not an option right now
-Been thinking of usb hd:s but I'm very concerned of problems I've been reading about
-My philosophy is that I trust my FreeNAS box, a second "cold storage" for the unlikely event my FreeNAS box break down.

I'm thinking of buying a nas device, rsync once a week to that. Mostly family photos and important files <2TB. I don't trust cheap NAS devices very much but I think it is more safe than usb sticks and usb hd:s. Also it would be simple to swap out drives and keep them of site (away from home). And it would be cheap. Now I am looking for a nas device that I could trust enough for writing data to cold storage drives. But I know nothing about cheap nas devices. I need a brand that doesn't break down directly, it should support rsync and it should be somewhat stable. It only needs 1 hd. When I grow out of space I will already have a second FreeNAS box somewhat off site. Are they all "good enought" (qnap, synology, etc) for my needs? Or am I thinking way wrong?

 

[Linkman]

I've been happy with my Synology box. Mine is a two bay, with two 3TB drives in Synology's version of RAID1, nice Web interface for management, rsync available, and they aren't particularly expensive.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Just build another FreeNAS. It's cheaper than a qnap, Synology nas device. Hp ml10 is $169 usually on sale.

 

[wblock]

Just build another FreeNAS. It's cheaper than a qnap, Synology nas device. Hp ml10 is $169 usually on sale.

This. Cheap commercial NAS systems are either worthless for data safety or cost more than a FreeNAS system. Or both.

 

[gpsguy]

Another low budget solution would be hang an eSATA connected drive on your server, add it as a second volume and replicate to it. As I recall @Arwen is doing this and her script is available on the forums.

 

[garm]

Ya that’s what I would do in that situation. For really important stuff just set copies=2 on the single drive pool.

 

[Arwen]

Another low budget solution would be hang an eSATA connected drive on your server, add it as a second volume and replicate to it. As I recall @Arwen is doing this and her script is available on the forums.

@Rikkard, the above is a reasonable backup solution. Basically you are not using a second NAS, but a removable disk(s) for backing up your single NAS. If / when things become more important or you have more money, simply add a new disk, (or disk set).

I prefer the more reliable and higher speed SATA, (or eSATA), though I ended up using a cheap 8TB SMR, (Seagate's Shingled Magnetic Recording). It's slower to write, and that's mostly what I do for my backup disk. Yet I don't really care how long the backups take.

Also, in my case the backup disks are not left on-line. Whence the backup is complete, the disk is exported, powered down and removed. I have 2 disks for backups at present, alternated.

This is roughly what I do;

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/how-to-backup-to-local-disks.26/

 

[Rikkard]

Thank you! Will use this solution.

 

[Arwen]

Oh, there have been comments about using a single disk ZFS pool, (or striped ZFS pool without any redundancy).
Since these are backup disks, it's useful to have both ZFS for data integrity and allow ZFS management tools like
snapshots of the backups or send / receive.

So for this specific case, I see good reason to use a single disk ZFS pool.

 

[Rikkard]

I will use a internal hot-swap cage 3.5". So I ordered an internal cage for $20 (5.25 --> 1x3.5). Two 1TB disks (will not back up movies, music etc). Switch them once a week. Do zfs send/recieve. Write a script. Will be nice to have two pools also to do some training. I will not hot-swap, not sure if it will work, so will power down once a week. Perhaps I will try hot swpping once in the future when I have a second freenas system but it is not worth the risk right now. Then ordered also 2 hard plastic protection cases for the disks and then I only need to find a safe place to put them. By the time I outgrow my 1TB disks my long term plan is to get another freenas system that then will become my new freenas system and my old one will become backup/server-tasks system. I only have approx. 400GB high value data right now.

Reason why I chose internal cage in the end is I could not find any external cage with direct SATA connection to disks and although it works for others (Arwen) it doesnt feel good.

Now I will have to learn more about writing bash scripts. Not sure how I will scrub the disks. I think I will scrub them when they are connected, not sure if it is any point scrubbing them after writing the snapshot? I will write a snapshot once a week, then switch drives.

 

[Arwen]

@Rikkard, Sounds like you have a good handle of what you want, and how to carry it out.

As for writting Bash scripts, that resource I referenced has a discussion attached to it. In it, I have a post with the script. Basically I could not figure out how to attach the script to the resource directly.

Here is a direct link to my post with the Bash script. It's documented, (in English...), and reasonable clean, (meaning for blocks of code, it's indented). However, I use Rsync for the copy, not ZFS send / receive. But, you can change it.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/how-to-backup-to-local-disks.51693/#post-357815

There were comments about performing the backup disk's pool scrub after the backup. I choose to perform the scrub before the backup. There are pros and cons for both.

While I won't write a backup script for you, if you have specific questions I may have time to help. (I was a professional computer programmer in another life .

 

[Rikkard]

It is a very nice bash script. There is a change log, professional! Thank you

 

[gary_1]

@Arwen I'm curious whether you considered using localhost ZFS replication for your backups? If so, what was the deciding factor in your current setup?

Here is my process: plug Backup1-A disk into esata port and turn on. Import volume via gui then leave it. Freenas will automatically realise the volume exists now and start replicating over and deleting old snapshots. Some time later when it's done I'll check the replication tab to ensure everything succeeded then occasionally run a scrub if it's been a while and finally export volume and disconnect.

Then I plug in Backup1-B to catch the rest of the datasets I can't fit on one disk (4TB + 1TB disk atm, need to get a 8TB before long).

I also have Backup2-A and Backup2-B which I cycle in now and then.

For the replication, that's setup as a normal replication task in the gui except it's set to replicate to localhost via ssh so it can replicate to a local disk rather than remote system.

The downside to this setup is that unless you have a few datasets, you might struggle to find a single disk large enough to replicate to. My largest dataset is 2-3TB whilst the rest are < 400GB so the 4TB disk will eventually need an upgrade to 8TB or the dataset splitting which I'd prefer not to :)

 

[Arwen]

@gary_1
One of my orginal backup solutions for Linux was to use externally attached USB drives and have the script create a new directory and make a new backup. The backup drive was formated EXT4, so it did not support snapshots to simulate incremental backups. Natually Rsync can do incremental copies, but that means I loose the file history. As long as I had space on the drive for each client, I just kept adding a new, full backup tree. If the backup drive got full, I deleted the oldest backups until I had a reasonable amount of space.

When I started the FreeNAS backups, I used the same methodology, Rsync to a new directory each time. Until it got full. Then I reviewed the backups, and realized I could use snapshots to get my file / backup history. And save disk space.

I do not use automatic snapshots on my FreeNAS, though the backups stored on it are using the same methodology, Rsync and manual ZFS snapshots. (But I don't bother with backing up the backup client snapshots... saves lots of space on the backup drive.)

It may not be possible to achieve what I want using ZFS send and receive. Basically I can go back more than a year on the backup drive. But not the FreeNAS, (not enough space).