Best Way To Backup FreeNAS Mini to Offsite FreeNAS Mini

[Audra]

We recently implemented a backup of our FreeNAS Mini Boxes onsite, to a larger singular FreeNAS Mini that would be taken offsite. This was done through rsync and ran perfectly. However, since then we have moved it offsite. I tried implementing essentially the same rsync technique with the preexisting modules, only changing the addresses to external addresses and proper ports, but that idea had some obvious issues and is not working.

What about be the best way to go about setting up the backup?

 

[nojohnny101]

Please post your system specs and hardware as per the forum rules.

Also it would be helpful if you could share your setting relevant to the rsync task.

You provided also no information on what errors you are seeing except to say I'm having a problem.

 

[wblock]

Have you looked at Replication Tasks?

 

[Audra]

First Onsite NAS
FreeNAS Mini
Build FreeNAS-9.3-STABLE-201602031011
Platform Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU C2750 @ 2.40GHz
Memory 16331MB
4x 4TB WD HDD, 64GB HDD, 120GB HDD in Raid-Z

Second Onsite NAS
FreeNAS Mini
Build FreeNAS-9.2.1.9-RELEASE-x64 (2bbba09)
Platform Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU C2750 @ 2.40GHz
Memory 16336MB
4x 4TB in Raid-Z.

I don't have the exact specs at hand, but our offsite NAS is a FreeNAS Mini with 24 TB, which are striped.

I don't want to give out specific IPs, so I'll redact those. Sorry about that.

My rsync is set up as rsync modules, where the remote host is pointing to ExternalIP : Port, set to push (for the two onsite backups) and pull (for the offsite backup). This happens every 00 minute, every 03 hours, every month, and every day. User is root. Recursive, Times, Compress, Archive, Preserve permissions, preserve extended attributes, are selected.


As for the errors, they're:
rsync: rsync: failed to connect to [IP Address] (IP ADDRESS): Operation timed out (60)
rsync: rsync: failed to connect to [IP Address] (IP ADDRESS): Network is unreachable (51)
rsync: rsync error: error in socket IO (code 10) at clientserver.c(128) [sender =3.1.1]

 

[Audra]

Please post your system specs and hardware as per the forum rules.

Also it would be helpful if you could share your setting relevant to the rsync task.

You provided also no information on what errors you are seeing except to say I'm having a problem.

Meant to quote you on the other post, but I've since posted my information. My apologies.

 

[Audra]

Have you looked at Replication Tasks?

I've glanced at it, but I think my issue, based off errors, is more towards actually speaking to the offsite NAS.

 

[wblock]

The onsite versions are old versions of FreeNAS, the offsite version is not specified, but agreed, it looks like communication. Both rsync and replication use SSH, so that's the place to start. Is SSH enabled on the target (offsite) system? If SSH is enabled on the remote system and you can't connect to it with SSH from the command line, look into firewall issues.

 

[nojohnny101]

As @wblock said your issue is most likely SSH not connecting. Don't know how many of these things you have already checked but here is a list I would start with:
- Check to make sure port forwarding is correctly setup on router that contains offsite FreeNAS.
- I once had problems with SSH not working with replication (as referenced above) and it came down to not having the "Allow TCP forwarding" checked in the SSH settings.
- How are you using a DNS or do you have business level static IPs? If you are running a DNS service then are you sure that it is running correctly in FreeNAS as a cron job or something similar?
- If you do have a DNS service, did you update the IP address in the DNS settings to point to the new IP address that the offsite FreeNAS box is behind now?
- Is the SSH service turned on?

Also indirectly mentioned above, the difference between 9.2.xx and 9.3xx and 9.10.xx can be significant in certain areas so just to eliminate that factor, I would make sure they at least all running the same stable release, ideally 9.10.xx but at the very least 9.3.xx. 9.2.xx is ancient.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

rsync modules don't use SSH, are not encrypted, and are really intended for use where privacy is not an issue, e.g. mirroring a public FTP site. You should probably not be using them for offsite backup, unless the data are encrypted or you tunnel the connection through SSH or a VPN. ZFS snapshot replication or regular rsync is probably better suited to the task.