iSCSI Config question

[bjcsoln]

Hi,

I currently have a rack that has a win2016 server, and 2 NAS boxes (one FreeNas and one non-standard). The windows server is connected to the non-standard NAS with an init/target iSCSI relationship (and has the NAS volume added as a local drive), and is connected to the FreeNas box using Windows sharing (and has a NAS volume mounted as a network drive)

What I want to know (if I can do) is have the FreeNas box act as an initiator to connect to the second volume on the non-standard NAS so the FreeNAS box has a location to drop snapshots onto. Is this possible?

 

[jgreco]

Snapshots are contained within the ZFS pool. What you're talking about doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless there's a lot of data being copied around, which isn't what snapshots are all about.

 

[bjcsoln]

I do understand this - already the client is going overkill with redundancy on this data (between the RAID config, then the snapshots, then the tape storage). They had brought this up (to see if we could put snapshots on this second NAS) so since I had a spare 8TB lying around, I thought I would give it a shot.

 

[jgreco]

I don't see the overkill.

Filesystem-level redundancy covers you for device failure, and since storage devices are fallible, that makes sense.

Snapshots cover you from user error, such as inadvertent file deletions, or malicious activities such as cryptolocker running rampant on a client.

Offline storage, such as tape, can protect you from catastrophic loss, such as a software worm, fire burning your facility, flooding, tornado, car driving through wall, etc. Generally the media has to be stored elsewhere which means that it won't be completely up to date.

Backups to another system tighten up the window on the offline storage backups. This can be done neatly via rsync in most cases.

It is common in the industry to use all of these, simultaneously, and it is not generally believed to be overkill.

https://storageswiss.com/2017/01/25/backup-replication-and-snapshot/

etc