SOLVED Which software for running backups of other devices to FreeNAS?

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

Hello!
I currently have 3 Windows 10 Drives, 1 Ubuntu Drive and 2 Android phones that I'd like to backup.

I prepared a 3TB HDD on FreeNAS that's fully dedicated for this purpose.

Ideally, FreeNAS would incrementally backup the stuff from the other PCs in its own datasets. Or (maybe better), the other PCs have a one-click shortcut that will start backing up all the data in FreeNAS in some way.

Any recommendation/best practice to achieve this? It's important that the Ubuntu one preserves permissions/symlinks/owner/group on files. Ideally for Windows too, but I'm fine with just copying files.

 

[Basil Hendroff]

Veeam has free Linux and Windows agents https://www.veeam.com/downloads.html

 

[Basil Hendroff]

Personally, I use Resilio Sync for selective backups as it also has agents for OS X, IOS and Android.

 

[Heracles]

Hey Dragon,

What you described here is surely not a way to use FreeNAS, to do backups or to protect data.

To put anything on a single drive is high risk, no matter that single drive is handled by FreeNAS or anything else.

So first thing would be for you to design a proper server and ensure propre redundancy. The very minimum is two drive in a mirror.

Instead of backing up the data to FreeNAS, why don't you host them right in FreeNAS and share them from there ? Share over NFS and Ubuntu can see them as easily as local files and can also handle ownership / permission easily. Same thing for Windows, but share over Samba and with Windows' ACL instead of Unix ACL.

Have fun designing your server,

 

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

Personally, I use Resilio Sync for selective backups as it also has agents for OS X, IOS and Android.

That's a great point! I have to backup other 2 android phones too!

 

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

Hey Dragon,

What you described here is surely not a way to use FreeNAS, to do backups or to protect data.

To put anything on a single drive is high risk, no matter that single drive is handled by FreeNAS or anything else.

So first thing would be for you to design a proper server and ensure propre redundancy. The very minimum is two drive in a mirror.

Instead of backing up the data to FreeNAS, why don't you host them right in FreeNAS and share them from there ? Share over NFS and Ubuntu can see them as easily as local files and can also handle ownership / permission easily. Same thing for Windows, but share over Samba and with Windows' ACL instead of Unix ACL.

Have fun designing your server,

Hey Heracles,
Thanks for the suggestion. I'm aware of 1 drive not being a backup. I have another drive ready, but I won't put it in FreeNAS, I'll use it to temporary plug in FreeNAS, replicate my backup drive and store it in a safe (well, right now just a drawer until I have a safe).
In addition to that, the devices have the data too, that gives me 2 backups and the data in the devices, which is a solid solution for home backup.

The advantage of the FreeNAS backup is that I can run it every time I want easily from my chair, while the other requires me to plug the drive into the server and I'm lazy, so I do it roughly once a month.

In addition to that, most of the files on these computers are backed up on the cloud too (at least the important files), except for the big ones which are also backed up on a different pool with mirroring.
Last but not least, the files of my laptop are all on github.

Too many backups!

 

[Heracles]

Hi again Dragon,

Are you aware that a hard drive that does not spin frequently die the very moment you need it ? Also, such a plan involve handling the drive frequently, so just as many occasions to drop it or damage it in various ways ? If you are about to do offline storage, you may be better with an SSD or some other support. Also, the safe will be important to protect against physical incidents like fire, but a safe that will give you hours of protection against fire will surely cost more than a second FreeNAS server...

Another option would be to do offsite replication to a second FreeNAS like I do here. My DR FreeNAS is at my father's place, hundreds of KM away, and I do ZFS replication to it. If you have some relative who are interested about IT and FreeNAS, you can even do mutual replication, you hosting their backups while they host yours.

I agree that what you described is above the average Joe Home User, but that guy being fully naked without any backup, it is pretty easy to do better.

Up to you to define if it is enough : FreeNAS with ZFS on a single drive ; a single offline mechanical drive ; ...

 

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

Hi again Dragon,

Are you aware that a hard drive that does not spin frequently die the very moment you need it ? Also, such a plan involve handling the drive frequently, so just as many occasions to drop it or damage it in various ways ? If you are about to do offline storage, you may be better with an SSD or some other support. Also, the safe will be important to protect against physical incidents like fire, but a safe that will give you hours of protection against fire will surely cost more than a second FreeNAS server...

Another option would be to do offsite replication to a second FreeNAS like I do here. My DR FreeNAS is at my father's place, hundreds of KM away, and I do ZFS replication to it. If you have some relative who are interested about IT and FreeNAS, you can even do mutual replication, you hosting their backups while they host yours.

I agree that what you described is above the average Joe Home User, but that guy being fully naked without any backup, it is pretty easy to do better.

Up to you to define if it is enough : FreeNAS with ZFS on a single drive ; a single offline mechanical drive ; ...

Hey Heracles,
For the moment is enough. The most important files are backed up in cloud storage, so if I lost everything, I'd still be able to work (I considered that the minimum). Family photos are backed up on a mirrored drive AND an offline drive.

This other backup, is more for availability rather than a real backup. I consider the offline backup + the cloud one to be enough. If I have more important files, I'll put them on the pool with mirroring.
The offline backup might die, sure, chance of the pool dying and the offline backup dying AND the devices dying too is low enough for a home user, so it's ok now.

If I make some pocket money, I can definitely add another drive and setup mirroring.

Unfortunately while I know people interested in IT they are not interested in owning a FreeNAS instance.
Also, we are talking about 3TB data here, they are not in possession of internet bandwidth needed (nor am I, although there is an option if I manage to talk it out with the landlord).

I forgot, using the files directly from FreeNAS is not an option. The Windows machines have mainly videogame save files (sounds like a joke, but it's true) that I want to backup, while the Ubuntu one is a laptop that travels with me, so it needs always offline access.

 

[Heracles]

You identified your needs, you designed a solution for them, you are aware of the limitations, you accepted the residual risk...

If only all the projects I worked on could have been done so well!

So good for your, you have what you need here.

Hope I did not bring bad luck to you ;-)

 

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

You identified your needs, you designed a solution for them, you are aware of the limitations, you accepted the residual risk...

If only all the projects I worked on could have been done so well!

So good for your, you have what you need here.

Hope I did not bring bad luck to you ;-)

Thanks! Bad luck has always been with my HDDs (drammatic bad luck), but I feel comfortable enough with that plan.
Thanks for going over my idea by the way, that was a very welcomed review ;)

 

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

Is there any alternative backup for Ubuntu?
I tried resilio sync (and rsync), but they are both having problems copying over permissions and ACLs.

In an ideal world, I'd just clone my entire HDD so that the restore is seamless.
While I couldn't care less about file permissions on the other computers, I have some interesting setup with ACLs to give nginx permissions to certain directories and similar things.

I also need to run this backup solution as root, because I need to backup some things in /etc
Last but not least, resilio sync wants writing capabilities to all the directories it can backup, which is definitely a no-no for me (would mean giving full write access to the entire system).

Rsync could work, but I have a lot of `chown` errors and if I use the flag --acls (preserve acls) it just breaks (doesn't work at all).
With a USB drive obviously this wasn't a problem, since the root user would own the HDD and just copy over everything.