Hints for doing local Backups?

[rakor]

Hey there!
Having done the switch from my old NAS (proprietary-stuff) to TrueNAS gives me the job to find a new way doing my regular backups.

I want to have a similar setting as with my last NAS, but slightly improved....

• Online-Backups:
  • one HDD is permanently connected to the NAS by USB
  • this HDD should be unmounted when not in use
  • daily the HDD is automatically mounted and an incremental backup is made to the disc.
  • after the backup is done the disc gets unmounted again.
  • if there are any issues I receive an email
  • the backup should be encrypted
• Offline-Backups
  • There are two to three discs. One stored elsewhere, which is swapped with the second one regularly. Might be, there is a third one laying in my cupboard.
  • The disks are manually connected to the NAS per USB and the backup is started manually
  • The backup is also done incrementally
  • the backup is encrypted

With ZFS send/receive this should be possible, but I wonder if TrueNAS gives me this possibility out of the box (somehow) or if I have to create a script fired by a cronjob. Still possible, but I'd prefer the wide comfortable way, over the narrow stony one. Doing it by myself will surely bring many problem I'd like to avoid.

ZFS native encryption should be just fine for me.

 

[elvisimprsntr]

Life is too short to spend time doing things manually. If I have to manually swap a disk means I will forget, become too lazy, or it will not get done when not on site. I automate everything with a 3-2-1 and G-F-S backup strategy.

 

[ChrisRJ]

I agree with @elvisimprsntr in that manual steps are a large inhibitor. I would suggest to backup (encrypted) to a cloud provider.

 

[rakor]

Thanks for your hints. When times will change and I have enough bandwidth here for backups in the cloud I will probably switch. Even if I am still not shure if I like it to have my data on some online-space. But for now I need an other way.
I want to automate as much as possible, but offline-backup is only possible manually I fear.

 

[ChrisRJ]

Well, I started with a 2 Mbps upload (now at 12 Mbps, still not great). Yes, it was awfully slow and the inital upload took over 6 months. But from then on the differential was small enough for a nightly job.

 

[rakor]

And how are you doing the backups? Using this "Cloud-Sync-Task"?

 

[ChrisRJ]

Yes. I use MS Office 365 Family, which I got from Amazon, when it was on offer. So I pay around 55 Euros for 6 TB of storage per year.

 

[elvisimprsntr]

Encrypted cloud sync to google drive. Data is encrypted in transit and on google drive. You get 15GB free which is more than enough for my critical files. Of course you can choose from any number of cloud storage providers.

 

[rakor]

How do you do encryption on the data?

 

[elvisimprsntr]

When you set it up on TrueNAS side, you can enable encryption in transit and at rest while on cloud provider.

 

[rakor]

Nice... :) Will have a look at it. But i do also need a local backup ;) Even if I would upload my backup for 6 Months, I dont want to wait a month for my recovery in the case of disaster ;)

 

[elvisimprsntr]

Google drive is random on demand access. Not all providers are the same. Depends on what capacity and access you want to pay for.