Despite reading and searching, I think my understanding of how replication works is lacking a few critical pieces.
I have a FreeNAS server with some critical data. I set up a second server and created a snapshot replication task. This works fine - all of the files replicated to the new server and it is now receiving hourly snapshots. My question concerns ongoing activity.
The second server is in place for disaster recovery, but it currently contains the data as it existed on Sept 1 (the day I started the replication) and an ever increasing number of hourly snapshots. If I have a catastrophic failure of the main server a year from now, what is the process that I use to rebuild the data? If I change a file on the main server the snapshot state will be replicated to the backup server, but it I don't change the file again for the next 12 months, do I have to start with the first incremental snapshot and then restore each in turn to get the data to a current state?
As I said to start, I think I am missing an important concept.
I have a FreeNAS server with some critical data. I set up a second server and created a snapshot replication task. This works fine - all of the files replicated to the new server and it is now receiving hourly snapshots. My question concerns ongoing activity.
The second server is in place for disaster recovery, but it currently contains the data as it existed on Sept 1 (the day I started the replication) and an ever increasing number of hourly snapshots. If I have a catastrophic failure of the main server a year from now, what is the process that I use to rebuild the data? If I change a file on the main server the snapshot state will be replicated to the backup server, but it I don't change the file again for the next 12 months, do I have to start with the first incremental snapshot and then restore each in turn to get the data to a current state?
As I said to start, I think I am missing an important concept.