Offsite Backup drive options

[NASr710]

Now that I have my FreeNAS box set up with two 8TB drives mirrored, and before I start using it too much, I need to set up an offsite backup. Since i have free bays on R710, i was hoping to simply us spare tray/bay and slip in an 8TB drive for backup. I guess another option is using an external USB drive, but I think the R710 uses USB2 so it may be slow. I would rather be able to do quick backup.

Also, I heard you can use a basic drive as opposed to NAS drive for backup, but the prices i am seeing out there are not much different (not huge savings). Drives for external HDs seem much cheaper and have heard of people taking those apart just to get the HD?

I have never done backup before on FreeNAS so any input would be valuable.

 

[nightshade00013]

May want to give this a read as it will probably answer a lot of questions.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/offsite-backup-suggestions.56921/

 

[Arwen]

I use an 8TB disk for off-site backups. My method is documented in the resource section of this forum. And yes, a free slot would be the preferred method over USB. Plus, using ZFS on the backup disk allows data faults to be detected, (though not corrected).

As for using desktop drives, or USB drives shucked from their containers, my opinion is that it depends on the importance of your data. I would go for a NAS type drive, and use it some what like a cold spare, but with backups. After all, if you have a fault in your mirror, that's more inportantant to fix. That said, I'd only do that if I had 2 backup drives. As you don't want to over write your only backup to restore redundancy only to find out you lost data on you other mirror disk!

 

[NASr710]

@Arwen Funny. I had responded to your section end of last year, and forgotten about it :)

So you are still using Rsync? Not familiar with it. I guess this is a little more complicated than I had first thought. Is it possible to use the backup drive with snapshot as a back up method?

I essentially want to do backups once or twice a month. I will bring drive home from work, do backup, take it back to work the next day. This is what we were doing with our computers and an external drive, prior to setting up the NAS box.

I like the concept of TimeMachine and the equivalent in Ubuntu (forget the name). Seems like snapshots is similar.

Would also prefer to set this up and manage through the GUI.

 

[Arwen]

Yes, you could use ZFS send & receive for the backup. I don't because I am more familar with Rsync. And I ended up with backup history snapshots on my backup disks. Meaning a single backup disk has 10 or 15 backup images. When the disk starts to get full, I delete the oldest ones until I have enough space.

I don't have any knowledge about using the GUI for backups.

 

[NASr710]

So I am getting back to this... Finally picked up an 8TB disk to use for offsite backup. Current setup two raided 8TB drives (i will call them Drives A). This contains two datasets.

Dataset 1 - main share drive (documents, photos, video, etc). Set up with AFP.

Dataset 2 - Timemachine backup for macs.

After reading through documentation, it seems the best for me would be to do following:

1. Do periodic snapshots to keep track of changes (similar to Mac time machine). This would ensure that if we have a corrupt file or accidentally deleted file, I can recover that file.

2. Dataset for Time Machine backups. One for multiple computers.

3. Use the 8TB drive that I would bring periodically (once or twice a month), and to a backup of Drives A, both datasets and snapshots. I would use an empty slot on the R710. I am thinking that I can simply take manual snapshots periodically? I am still a little confused about how best to do this. i want to avoid doing a full backup everytime.

 

[PhilipS]

I am thinking that I can simply take manual snapshots periodically? I am still a little confused about how best to do this. i want to avoid doing a full backup everytime

You could setup replication in the GUI by using 127.0.0.1 as the destination (Not the fastest thing, but once the initial data is sent, it won't take long to add your snapshots). Just make sure your snapshots don't expire before you have a chance to perform your replication - or the entire dataset will need sent again. Then just disable/enable the replication task when the backup drive is removed/inserted.

 

[NASr710]

I think Rsync might be the way to go. I am reading though and trying to understand how to set it up. I don't want to set up a timed backup since drive may not be installed. I need to be able to trigger the backup manually when drive is onsite.

@PhilipS why use 127.0.0.1?

 

[PhilipS]

Replication can be enabled/disabled, when you enable it, it immediately starts - so in essence you can trigger it manually. The built-in GUI replication is designed to replicate to another machine - by setting the remote machine to 127.0.0.1 (the loopback address), you can replicate to the same machine.

 

[NASr710]

Thank you. So is there advantage of going with rsync vs Replication? I read through both and I was leaning with rsync since it seemed it might do faster backup by copying changes.

If I understand Replication, it seems to only copy a snapshot(s). I just set up my system with snapshots so I still new to this as well.

 

[PhilipS]

Replication uses ZFS send/receive which will only send the changed blocks between two snapshots - it is faster than rsync - as long as your last replicated snapshot isn't removed by having too short of an expire time - your source and your destination need to have a common point of reference otherwise all the data will need to be transfered again.

 

[NASr710]

ok. thank you. I might make a sample dataset to play with.