Removable RAID sets for NFS backups

[Steve B.]

I've been using FreeNAS for years now and I absolutely love it but I've never needed to get into the technical side of it. I've got a new server I'm going to use to create backups on removable RAID sets that will be stored off-site. I know I can do this with Windows but I would rather use FreeNAS to do it. I'm just not finding much information about doing this. We currently use ISCSI targets on both our FreeNAS servers but I would rather use NFS shares on this third server. I'm also adding 10Gb NICs to our backup servers and it's my understanding NFS is considerably faster than using iSCSI targets. The new server has two mirrored drives for the OS and four removable drives that will contain the RAID sets. I've researched this and found everything except what I'm looking for.

First, is FreeNAS capable of doing this? If so, please provide a summary of the process and/or point me to the docs on doing such. It would be helpful to know how FreeNAS refers to this process (what's it called or what term or phrase is used by FreeNAS).

Second, are there any caveats I should be aware of? If so, what are they and/or where can I learn more about them?

Third, is/are there any tweak(s) I need to make to get the more out of the 10Gb NICs (Intel x540t)? I've read long thread about people making tons of changes in FreeNAS tunables only to find they didn't need to or it didn't help.

Your help is greatly appreciated.

 

[sretalla]

First, is FreeNAS capable of doing this?

Yes, in the sense that you can do it using FreeNAS, It is not part of any built-in or automated process in the system, neither is it officially documented.

The "process" you will use is to Export/Disconnect the pool you want to store remotely, then remove the disks. When bringing the disks back, you will need to import the pool to make it visible again.

Second, are there any caveats I should be aware of? If so, what are they

You will need to pay attention to the pool names as if you have multiple sets, you can't just call the pool "backup" or whatever for all of the sets... this has meaning for any scripts you then run to create the backups too, potentially needing to check that the right pool is mounted for that day/time.

Watch out for other things like System dataset, shares or jails or scripts/tasks tied to those pools as those will fail or even be automatically removed in some cases.

Clearly don't remove drives from the system while the pool is still online.

Be careful with the check-boxes on the Export/Disconnect process as there are options there which are clearly not helpful to this process (like wipe the data from the disks).

 

[Steve B.]

Awesome. It sounds like the process is generally the same as in Windows. It's great to know about the pool names. As if FreeNAS isn't good enough, it would be a total rockstar if support for removable sets were added. Thank you so much for the information.