Question regarding deleting stale snapshots on remote system

[TooMuchData]

Hi folks.

I have a second FreeNAS system used exclusively to backup my first through replication tasks.

I would like to create a manual recursive snapshot on the first and then delete all the other snapshots on the first. My goal is to free up all available space not used for existing files on the primary system.

Once that new manual snapshot is replicated, I would expect all the previously replicated snapshots to be deleted from the backup system (as they are now stale). I would further expect any files that were previously replicated, but are not also in the new manual snapshot, will be deleted from the backup system.

In other words, my backup system will contain only one replicated snapshot and only those files that are known in that snapshot.

Do I understand this correctly?

Thanks for your help and for the wonderfulness of FreeNAS.

 

[m0nkey_]

Snapshots are basically free if no data has changed. Do you have data that changes often which warrants this?

You can also set the snapshot expiry but setting the snapshot lifetime: http://doc.freenas.org/11/storage.html#periodic-snapshot-tasks

 

[Ericloewe]

I would expect all the previously replicated snapshots to be deleted from the backup system

Hmm... What does the manual say? I'm not sure how the pruning is being done, these days.

 

[TooMuchData]

Thanks to those who responded.

I proceeded as outlined above. I can report that the end result is as I expected, but the process was not.

I had thought (hoped) that any files contained in the new snapshot as well as the deleted snaphots would be retained. Not so. In the process of deleting the stale snapshots the files were deleted. They were replicated again as part of the new snapshot. Makes sense (to me now).

All's well that ends well, but I won't be doing this again (just to regain some fractional portion of a TB in my pool).