keep dataset's snapshots only on backup/replication server?

[digity]

I have a TrueNAS server for my ESXi datastores (NFS & iSCSI) and I replicate it's important datasets to another TrueNAS server which serves as my NAS for backups. I've always had trouble fully grasping the concept of snapshots in FreeNAS/TrueNAS, but as a pre-caution I have snapshots enabled on these sets of datasets on both servers. I just performed another pool migration and again see how much snapshots are eating up space on my primary TrueNAS server - this feels wasteful. Is it best to have snapshots of a dataset on both servers or can I have snapshots that go back months only on the backup/replication server?

P.S. - These are not VM snapshots, just regular ol' FreeNAS/TrueNAS snapshots

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Snapshot tasks have a retention policy. Replication tasks, too. You can keep, e.g. just one day on the source server and an entire month on the backup server.

Note that you must have at least one common snapshot for incremental replication to work. If you keep only one day on the source and you have a disruption of the replication for two days (e.g. network outage, hardware failure, ...) you need to start replication from scratch.

I take hourly snapshots and keep 2 weeks on the source and 3 months of one snapshot per day on the backup. All easily configurable in the task parameters.