Looking for a solution for backing up our FreeNAS

[danzg]

We have a 12TB FreeNAS box in the office, and are looking for a way to keep a backup of it offsite.

We're considering

1. tape;
2. a bunch of bare drives (popped into a spare hotswap bay);
3. external drives.

Any advice on which solution is best? (Online backup is not an option because our internet connection is too slow.)

And, is there some software that will keep track of which files have been backed up and which haven't? So that when one backup unit fills up, we can continue the backup on the next? (We don't want to have to back up to a 12TB device.)

This software could run, preferably, on the NAS itself; or from one of our Mac clients.

Our goal is a situation where

1. we attach some backup device;
2. it automatically fills up with stuff from the server; the contents of this unit are catalogued somewhere
3. something prompts us to replace with a fresh drive/tape;
4. backup continues until full, including any files that have changed since being backed up.

 

[cyberjock]

You could make another freenas server and backup using rsync. If you build a small enough server you could even make it portable enough to take "offsite" wherever that is.

 

[StephenFry]

> We don't want to have to back up to a 12TB device.

You have, essentially, 12TB of data. If you are saying you do not want to back that original 12TB up to another 12TB device, "You're gonna have a bad time", to speak in memes.

Of course you could use 6 2TB drives and fill them one by one. But that is hellish. Unless you have nothing else to do and are looking for extra work, and lots of problemfixing, it is waaay cheaper to build a second 12TB NAS, and rsync to that.

Ideally off-site, but but if your LAN/WAN is not adequate for that job, noobsauce80 offers the only real option I can see: get yourself a computer case made for LAN parties or something similarly portable, and get to building a second NAS.

 

[Bever]

First of all you have to define what you mean by backup. Do you want just a replica? If a proper backup with versioning and retention? Because if you do, you will need more than your 12TB...

 

[cyberjock]

Seriously, I'd consider building a case that will hold as many hard drives as you need and use an Intel Atom processor in it with 4GB of RAM. It'll be low power, slow, cheap, and (if you look around) small enough that you can plug it in, do an rsync, then unplug it and move it where you want to keep it. It'll even be completely self contained.

If you think 15+ tapes, 6 individual hard disks, or whatever other plan that involves multiples of whatever media you plan to use will work, feel free to try. But let me tell you from experience... you WILL waste alot of time trying to keep track of what is and isn't backed up. You almost certainly will have only partial backups. You will have problems doing the backup as well as recovering. Save yourself ALOT of trouble and just make another portable FreeNAS server.

Once you have multiple TB of data your options QUICKLY shrink to 1.

 

[Stephens]

If the data is changing daily, the NAS needs backup daily. If the internet connection is too slow for that, consider tape. Otherwise, you can do an initial rsync to a backup server with the server there locally, then set up an rsync overnight via internet connection to a remote location which will local NAS replicate changes.

If the internet is indeed too slow to replicate daily changes to a remote location via rsync, I'd strongly consider LTO-5 tape with a Full+Differential setup using rotating tapes for the dailies (differentials). I wouldn't even worry about swapping tapes "when full". I'd just swap them everyday (or have someone do it) as part of operations. You're dealing with 8 or fewer tapes (depending how full your NAS is) for the Full backup to start, plus tapes for the dailies.