Off-site backup for FreeNAS

[russman]

I have a FreeNAS server used for a backup repository for some virtual machines and use Veeam as the backup software. I have been working with ElephantDrive to test a plugin for their backup service. I have the plugin installed and the backup works like it's supposed to.
The trouble that I'm having is that ElephantDrive limits their file sizr to 15GB. When Veeam makes a backup of a virtual machine (VM), it is one big file. Our Windows server has a full backup file (.vbk) that is a little over 1TB and the incrementals (.vrb) are 30 to 60GB. So, the question is: who do you know that can backup off site with the FreeNAS system and either doesn't limit on file size or their limit is really large.
The other option would be to put another FreeNAS server in a colocation or data warehouse and use replication.
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Ericloewe]

Rsync.net offers ZFS replication targets and seem reasonably popular.

Don't have any experience with them, though, so I can't really say how well it works.

 

[bestboy]

I have no experience with any of them, but here are a few names of low cost online storage services:

BackBlaze B2, Amazon S3, Amazon Glacier, Crashplan, Dropbox, Google Cloud Storage...

 

[cyberjock]

I've talked to 2 people that have used rsync.net for ZFS replication. They said it works very well for them and they are very happy with the performance and cost.

 

[russman]

Crashplan and Backblaze don't support FreeNAS, Dropbox is a NAS alternative so they don't support it, I haven't heard anything back from Amazon and the response from Google was basically that they don't support it (I think they are more like dropbox). I did have email contact from rsync.net and think they are the way to go. Below is their email with their offerings just in case anyone else is interested:


Hello Russell,


Tried to reach you today via telephone but did not get through - let's start this discussion via email and we can schedule a call if necessary.


First, we would be very happy to serve you - our product works *perfectly* with FreeNAS.


We have no file size limits. Our ZFS filesystem can handle files larger than petabytes in size, so it will never be an issue.


Further, there is a discounted rate for FreeNAS customers that you may have seen mentioned on the FreeNAS forums - it would be as low as 7 cents per GB, per month, for multi-TB accounts like you require.


Finally, we will step you through the entire thing. We are in close contact with the FreeNAS authors and know them personally here in the bay area and we maintain our own test-FreeNAS systems in our offices for supporting customers that have them.


Please let me know what additional questions I can answer.


Let me know the total size of account you'd like to start with and I will send you a discounted signup link.


Thanks,


John Kozubik

rsync.net, Inc.

With all of those benefits and support, it appears that this would be the best solution.
Thanks for all of the help and suggestions.

 

[danb35]

Crashplan and Backblaze don't support FreeNAS

Crashplan (with some fiddling) does run on FreeNAS, and at $50/year for unlimited storage, it's almost certainly cheaper than rsync.net will be (the break-even point would be at 60 GB of data backed up, at the $0.07/GB/mo rate they quote above). The service level from rsync.net, and their support for ZFS replication, may well be worth it, but it's something to consider.

 

[russman]

danb35,

I was chatting with a rep from Crashplan and he said that it wasn't supported. Now, maybe he was just reading from some product requirement guide or something. Have you had experience using Crashplan with FreeNAS? The price of 50.00/year is really hard to ignore. With the amount of data for us to backup, our price would be a little over four times that /month. I guess what I'm asking is in your opinion, how hard would it be to get Crashplan reliabily working with a FreeNAS server? I'm not someone that needs micromanagement but I'm not a guru either. I have been using this FreeNAS server for about a year and a half (I built it and installed FreeNAS on it) but since it works extremely well, I haven't had to do hardly anything with it. I was able to get the ElephantDrive plugin installed and working but I had to have some help from ElephantDrive support to get everything configured correctly. I am all for saving money and this would be quite a lot but I need something that will be reliable. How is their support?

 

[danb35]

The Crashplan rep was right, I think, that FreeNAS/FreeBSD isn't "supported". That doesn't mean the Crashplan won't run on FreeNAS/FreeBSD, but you're kind of on your own if you do. There's a plugin for Crashplan on FreeNAS, which many people have made work with a greater or lesser degree of difficulty, but a number of design decisions made by the Crashplan folks in the last few major versions have (intentionally or otherwise) made it harder. One of the issues is that the FreeNAS plugin relies on "headless" usage, where the Crashplan client (the GUI part that shows you backup status, allows you to choose directories to back up, etc.) runs on a different system than the service (the part that actually backs up data). Crashplan is designed to work in this way, and such a configuration is documented, but it isn't supported by them, and some of their updates have made it more difficult to actually run that way.

A method preferred by a number of people (including myself) is to set up a Linux machine--either a standalone machine or a virtual machine, as your situation dictates--and install Crashplan on that. Export the directories on your FreeNAS box via NFS, mount them on the Linux box, and set Crashplan to back up those directories. You can use VirtualBox in FreeNAS to do this, which I did for a while without problems, or you can run a virtual machine just about anywhere else--I'm now running mine on my Proxmox host with a number of other VMs.

 

[bestboy]

Crashplan and Backblaze don't support FreeNAS, Dropbox is a NAS alternative so they don't support it, I haven't heard anything back from Amazon and the response from Google was basically that they don't support it

I guess there are ways to use most of the services with FreeNAS. Typically these services provide an open API and at least a generic command line client to use that API.

• For Crashplan there is FreeNAS plugin
• BackBlaze has a command line client based on Python that would probably run in a jail.
• There is a Dropbox client based on a BASH script called dropbox-uploader [1][2] that should also work from a jail.
• For Amazon S3 there is a ready-made FreeNAS plugin based on the s3cmd tool.
• ...

 

[Sakuru]

You can use a variety of applications in a jail to backup to B2, S3, etc. Duplicati, Rclone, and HashBackup are a few of them.
However, for what these services can end up costing it can actually be cheaper to build a second FreeNAS box and replicate to it.

 

[PopeFelix]

For what it's worth, I use FreeNAS and CrashPlan. I have a Lubuntu VM running on my FreeNAS box, and said VM runs the CrashPlan GUI. I have my desktop and my wife's desktop both running CrashPlan as well and backing up to the Lubuntu VM. The Lubuntu VM then backs things up to the CrashPlan cloud.

One thing I want to note here is that the version of VirtualBox provided with FreeNAS (via phpVirtualbox) is 4.3.12, but the 4.3.12 guest extensions would not compile with my kernel (4.4.0-24-generic). I had to use the 5.X (I forget what version) guest extensions ISO. I didn't have to update VirtualBox.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

The Lubuntu VM then backs things up to the CrashPlan cloud.

The Lubuntu VM backs up the CrashPlan backups from the desktops to the CrashPlan cloud? If so, you've somehow circumvented CrashPlan's primary anti-abuse mechanism.

 

[PopeFelix]

I think it does. At least I see my wife's machine on CrashPlan.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

I see my wife's machine on CrashPlan.

The key question is, do you see the data?

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

https://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/4/Backup/Can_I_Back_Up_A_Backup

 

[PopeFelix]

I think I was misinterpreting what I saw on CP. Looks like only my VM is getting backed up.