Backup-Strategy

[Makki]

Hi,
my first "real" FreeNAS (I used it under Virtualbox, ESXi for some years..) is up&running- no trouble, everything fine so far.
So first of all: thanks to FreeNAS, well done!

Now thinking about Desaster-Backups (all migrated data from the previous Systems (Syno, Debian, QNap) still lives on external ext2-disks for now..)
But ext2 with FreeNAS is epic fail.. Anyway..

Prerequisites:
- main purpose of the Soho-FreeNAS is keeping reliable Backups of all the other Systems (mainly Linux, Debian, Ubuntu via rsync)
- some filesharing for "media" , not really critical
- backup of my owncloud with hourly snapshots (VERY critical)
- I cannot sync it up due to limited Upstream-bandwidth
- still want to have an offsite-backup and the possibility to access this backup (read-only) while being on the road

So my Idea was to have a FreeNAS as VM on my Laptop (well, its rather a Workstation wit i7, 32GB RAM, 500GB m2 + 2x2TB HDD internal + 2x4TB USB3 WD HDD), sync the ZFS-Volumes/Snapshots and share them locally read-only.

Any (better) thoughts are welcome!

Michael

 

[dlavigne]

Did you decide to go forward with this solution or have you thought of something else?

 

[johnnychicago]

I fail to see how you can have hourly snapshots replicated to a travelling computer unless it is online all the time. That seems inconvenient.

With replicating to a backup system not on the LAN, you'll have to provide a way for the backup to be reachable, either by having a fixed IP or dyndns'ing. Your main Freenas will have a task running trying every minute to connect and replicate (and email you to notify that your backup system is not reachable).

Luckily I have a CAT7 running to a building seperate from my house (a garage), so that is where my backup lives. It serves as insurance against fire, theft and the like. But having run the backup on Freenas for a few months now, I have an impression that ZFS replication is comparably fast/small - considerably more so than the Linux/rsync snapshots I took before. It may be very feasible to initialise the replication locally and then transfer the backup instance to another location and go on replicating via the internet without being too much of a bandwidth hog.

I should actually go and gather some data there.