Solutions for Off-Site Backup

[macx979]

Hi,

currently I do the following in order to backup and protect my most important data the best possible way:
1. Snapshots every day lasting for 7 days; every week lasting for 4 weeks; once a month lasting forever (100years)
2. I use replication tasks from my main Pool to a dedicated Backup Pool in the same FreeNAS device. This backup pool consists of 2 mirrored HDDs.
3. I use cloud sync via SFTP to a cloud provider with files being encrypted. The profile is COPY, meaning data will only be copied to this cloud but not being deleted.

I'd like to exchange number 3, the cloud provider with another off-site backup solution. First, because it's costly and second I don't want to have my data, even tough it's encrypted, to be lying around on cloud servers of any provider.

I have an off-site location where I can establish a VPN tunnel to and I am thinking about setting up a cheap 1-bay NAS (e.g. Synology DS119J) over there. I'd go for a 1-bay because possible downtime due to failure is not a issue for me.

Is the Synology a good device for this purpose or are there better options?

In order to back up the data, I currently see two options:
1. use the SFTP cloud sync option in FreeNAS pointing to this NAS
2. use rsync - I read that synology rsync is somehow different to what FreeNAS rsync does - maybe even incompatible

So, does this make sense? Which way of transferring the backup data should I go for? Due to the VPN tunnel the off-site backup device appears to be in the same network and maybe there are even other options I haven't thought about yet.

thx & Best
macx

 

[JohnDigital]

If this system is solely for backup of a backup you might consider to just retrofit an old PC/Workstation/Server with a mirrored array, install FreeNAS and configure an rsync task on your main rig pushing to this slave (pull). Once configured and running it works slick. Consider ECC memory but the rest of the machine could likely be stock. Im using an old Dell PE server we had laying around collecting dust and it works great. I did put new Red Drives in it, so its kind of like new. Since this machine is located at my house and its power mostly wasted, I even have NextCloud, Plex and a few others running from it no problems. I did figure out during that this particular server, even though it has 6 SATA ports, only 4 can be used at once for some reason. I think that was the only oddity. A power cost over time might make the Synology the better choice for you.

As for how to actually do the backup, I just set this server up next to our main office rig and did an initial rsync of the pertinent data on site over network, then set up an rsync task over SSH to do a nightly incremental, then of course snapshots, SMART tests, and Alerts. Move the server to your offsite location, configure routing and test. This works great, but we dont have many TBs of data that changes, maybe a couple GBs at most. Sometimes the backups are done in a minute or less. Then every morning we have exact mirrors of our data, which consists of mostly office type files, pictures, PDFs and whatnot.

In theory you could also set this up as you describe with a VPN, but I feel like you dont really even need to do that. Good luck, let me know if I can help further.

 

[macx979]

Hi John,

since it is solely for backup, setting up an entire machine feel to me like over engineering things. At the remote location there is no need for any additional services like plex etc.
Is there actually any benefit of having a second FreeNAS server for replicating data to in comparison to just use any remote device which understands rsync or ftp?

My data which needs to be backed up is not that much. Just 200GB roughly and as you said, I'd also do the initial sync next to my FreeNAS rig and move the backup device to the off-site location afterwards.

 

[JohnDigital]

No. The solution you describe is perfectly fine. I just figure most of us have an old PC laying around is all. I've used these NAS toasters in the past and they have disappointed every time. But for 200gb, I would hope it will work great.