How do you backup your FreeNAS data?

[Deleted47050]

This is purely out of curiosity as I haven't found a discussion on this after a quick search (and I am not even sure this is the right subforum tbh, but anyway).

For those of you who are using FreeNAS as a pure NAS (so not just to run some jails, or as a backup server itself), how do you backup your data? Do you have a second FreeNAS box acting as a backup server? Or do you upload everything to a cloud backup solution? Or perhaps do you only use external hard drives?

I am asking this because I am planning on how to expand my FreeNAS environment in the future and would like to see how people have been handling this so far.

 

[pirateghost]

Most of my data is replaceable. The important stuff I keep at least 3 local copies on different machines and a copy in crashplan

 

[Arwen]

My FreeNAS has less than 8TB of usable space, from 4 x 4TB in a RAID-Z2.

So I use a pair of single disk ZPools, rotated, and kept off-site. One is 8TB for
everything, including the Media Dataset. The other is an old 750GB drive for
everything without the Media Dataset. Later when the old 750GB drive bites
the big one, I'll replace it with at least an 8TB drive.

Basically I mount up the backup drive in an external eSATA hot swap drive
enclosure. Perform the backup, then export the pool. Later I take the drive off
site.

 

[depasseg]

Attached to my primary Freenas1, I have a second zpool which is used as a local replication target. I also replicate to a second server across the network. I had also been using crashplan, but with all the issues lately, it been a bit flakey.

 

[Fuganater]

My FreeNAS1 (Rick_James) puts a copy of all my important data on to FreeNAS2 (Leeroy_Jenkins). I have a 2TB WD external which I sync once a month and is always with me. Twice a year I sync another 2TB WD external which is stored at my parents house. I also use Crashplan. My goal is to setup something that allows me to replicate data to my parents house or my brothers.

 

[philiplu]

I use the GUI Replication to back up my main FreeNAS box to on old HP Microserver N36L (which used to run Windows Home Server 2011 until I ran into 2TB limits and switched to FreeNAS). That 2nd box is set up with 5x3TB RaidZ1, used just for backing up the main box. The main box also has a 5-in-3 hot-swap bay. I have two sets of 3x5TB RaidZ1 backup disk sets, with one set kept off-site in a safe deposit box, the other sits in the bays. I wrote a script that replicates my main pool once a day to the current hot-swap backup disk set. Once a month or so, I run to the bank to swap out the backup disk sets.

That means I've got 3 backup copies of my main FreeNAS pool - one up to an hour old (in the HP Microserver), one up to a day old (the hot-swap bays), and one up to a month or so old (the safe deposit box off-site). I know I should be using RaidZ2, not Z1, given the size of the drives involved, but decided to risk it since I have 3 tiers of backups (5TB drives aren't cheap!). The main pool is safer with a single 6x4TB RaidZ2 vdev.

I considered something like Crashplan or BackBlaze, but probably won't bother. I'm backing up around 6 TB of data in all (mostly backups of the home PCs plus tons of photos and ripped CDs), so uploading the data to the cloud would take forever. While some services let you seed the initial upload by mailing off an actual disk, I still see about 25 GB of data changed per day (thanks to monolithic Outlook PST files that get backed up from home PCs), and the resultant uploads of around 750GB a month would probably cause Comcast to start complaining.

 

[ShimadaRiku]

Important data backup to an external HD, another copy offsite at parent's home , photos gets extra copy on DVD/BD and each housed each inside a fireproof safebox. On top of that several partial copies exist elsewhere on other pc/laptop via googledrive & btsync.

Most think i'm crazy paranoid, but it's a workflow habit that works well for me. Lesson learned the hard way like many after losing data. Just recently started using freenas so in the future I'd like to do replication to my parent's home offsite instead of trucking a HD over every holiday. Cloud storage would be nice and considering it, but people say crashplan is a hit or miss kind of thing.

 

[anodos]

Currently my 'offsite' backups happen two ways:
1) crashplan - running in a centos6 VM
2) WD mycloud I reflashed to Debian stable. (Rsync target - about as cheap and portable as you can get).

Important stuff gets replicated on the lan to second computer.

 

[Johev]

I would like to ask a simple question on the backup. Is it possible to connect a USB HDD to FreeNAS 9.3 stable and copy files to it?

 

[Fuganater]

I would like to ask a simple question on the backup. Is it possible to connect a USB HDD to FreeNAS 9.3 stable and copy files to it?

There are many threads on here that address this.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/connect-usb-external-drive-to-freenas.15150/

 

[ShimadaRiku]

Currently my 'offsite' backups happen two ways:
1) crashplan - running in a centos6 VM
2) WD mycloud I reflashed to Debian stable. (Rsync target - about as cheap and portable as you can get).

Important stuff gets replicated on the lan to second computer.

Oh, didn't know WD mycloud is reflashable. Looks like you can even put on OMV. I read newer revisions made it harder to reflash. Might have to try it when I see it on sale.

 

[Johev]

Dear Fuganater, I read those threads however was wondering if something has changed recently in the updates. This is going a little off-topic however would creating a jail (Ubuntu / Windows) in FreeNas with phpVirtualBox allow me to plugu-in a USB and transfer the files like that?

 

[Fuganater]

Dear Fuganater, I read those threads however was wondering if something has changed recently in the updates. This is going a little off-topic however would creating a jail (Ubuntu / Windows) in FreeNas with phpVirtualBox allow me to plugu-in a USB and transfer the files like that?

I only ref the other threads because I was looking to still be able to do local backups directly to my 2TB WD passport. Basically everyone said don't do it. Now as for what you are talking about that goes beyond my experience/expertise. Hopefully one of the Pros will weigh in.

 

[nick779]

I replicate my entire dataset to a laptop running freenas daily and have two rotating external hard drives that I backup to every few weeks that I keep at work.

Still doesnt feel like enough lol

 

[Deleted47050]

I replicate my entire dataset to a laptop running freenas daily and have two rotating external hard drives that I backup to every few weeks that I keep at work.

Still doesnt feel like enough lol

You replicate your entire dataset on a laptop? How big is your dataset? :D

 

[nick779]

You replicate your entire dataset on a laptop? How big is your dataset? :D

Around 1.25TB.

 

[Scharbag]

I run 2 pools in a single chassis and use a combination of Rsync and replication to backup all of my data. Prior to backups, I use snapshots on the backup pool to ensure that I can recover old file versions if something went snakey.

In a perfect world, I would have the backup pool in a separate chassis in another location, but I am sure my X-Files box sets can be re-ripped if needed :)

For my truly irreplaceable data, I use Tresorit and push that to the cloud. It is funny how little space a lifetime of irreplaceable data takes up...

Cheers,

 

[sremick]

I don't, yet. I don't have anything that isn't replaceable with effort, but it'd indeed be a big PITA to recreate all the data files. With 6+TB and growing, it's a bit tricky for me. But it's something I think about regularly. Crashplan is tempting but is ongoing money for a rather difficult process to set up that seems to be slow as death (although I do have 25Mbit upload) and prone to breaking every other week for one reason or another, which isn't a feature of a good backup scheme.

 

[webpilot]

I didn't want to go too far off topic, but is there a source or link for how to flash the WD mycloud? I have one that I would like to use in a backup scenario.

 

[Mirfster]

My FreeNAS1 (Rick_James) puts a copy of all my important data on to FreeNAS2 (Leeroy_Jenkins). I have a 2TB WD external which I sync once a month and is always with me. Twice a year I sync another 2TB WD external which is stored at my parents house. I also use Crashplan. My goal is to setup something that allows me to replicate data to my parents house or my brothers.

Gotta love the Leeroy Jenkins naming convention... :D