BACKUP QUESTION - BEHAVIOR CLOUD SYNC TASK BACKBLAZE B2 - .ZFS SNAPSHOT DIR BACKED UP?

[webdawg]

Hello,

Does the cloud sync rclone process backup .zfs? I want to backup my snapshot data to backblaze b2. Is there a way to make this happen?

I know this is somewhat wasteful, as the way zfs snapshotting work is cumulative, and has de-duplication, but for the data I am backing up, it would be valuable, and is not so big.

Thanks for your reply!!!

 

[winnielinnie]

I want to backup my snapshot data to backblaze b2. Is there a way to make this happen?

File-based tools are not aware of ZFS records and snapshots. They only deal with files.

To leverage ZFS snapshots, you need to remain within ZFS tools (such as "zfs send/recv").

If you somehow manage to force the transfer of the hidden .zfs/snapshot directory, you will end up transferring essentially the same filesystem multiple times over, and likewise consuming as much space on the target. (For example, if each instance of your snapshotted filesystem has 10,000 files? Then five snapshots will transfer/consume 100,000 files; mostly the same files in each instance.)

 

[webdawg]

Right I understand what .zfs is, and how it works, but I just wanted to confirm. Thanks!! If I wanted it to go into .zfs, is there an include option to do this. I understand I will be backing up data in a horrible space inefficient manner, but I have a use case for this.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

You could try to add the paths to your backup software explicitly. They do not show in getdirent(). You need to know they exist and then explicitly chdir() into them. So any piece of software that works on a tree recursively will not see them.