Cost effective Off site backup solution

[nojohnny101]

hello everyone,
That's to everyone that has helped me get to this point. I have my freenas box all set up, shares working, and everything is great. I have scrub schedules and snapshots thanks to advice from @cyberjock and others. My next task is to evaluate and pick an off-site replication solution.

I have read some threads from about two or three years ago in regards to this topic but wanted to get an updated viewpoint and ask in a slightly different way. I am on a minimum budget, so please keep that in mind.

- In order to replicate to an off-site backup, do I have to build another freenas box?

- currently I have 4TB of usable storage. Could I just buy a raspberry pi, install Linux on that, and then plug in a 4 TB external USB hard drive? How easy is this set up and how well is it supported within Freenas?

- I have read about people using crash plan with success. is that a more viable? I would obviously go for the free account which requires your own offsite server, but in that case what I have to build another freenas box?

Also it isn't mentioned specifically in the manual, but does the off-site backup storage size have to match the usable storage size of the freenas box?

Ultimately what I am looking to protect against, is an unrecoverable loss on the main freenas box because of either hardware failure, damage from a power outage, etc.

I appreciate any thoughts and comments! This community is been so great! I can't wait for the day when I can contribute back!

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

In order to replicate to an off-site backup, do I have to build another freenas box?

No. There are various options, ranging from moving physical drives offsite to CrashPlan to Amazon S3. For some people, the simplest solution is to use a cloud backup program that runs on a client machine that has access to the FreeNAS data. I'm a big fan of Arq Backup for the latter.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Taking drives off site, zfs replication either to zfs or a file if you don't have zfs on the other side, crashplan to cloud or to personal server.

I think these are some options and depending on how much data you have will affect the one you choose.

 

[DrKK]

I use an unorthodox, but very useful, solution:

I have a Windows box on 24/7 as it is an HTPC for the wife/kids. I have large external drives connected to that box. I use "syncbackfree" by "2brightsparks" software on the Windows side to pull any new files to those backup drives, each night, at 2am. It actually works awesome.

For any irreplaceable family photos, etc., those are also backed up to Amazon glacier.

Total cost of this solution: About 90 cents per month.

 

[anodos]

I use an unorthodox, but very useful, solution:

I have a Windows box on 24/7 as it is an HTPC for the wife/kids. I have large external drives connected to that box. I use "syncbackfree" by "2brightsparks" software on the Windows side to pull any new files to those backup drives, each night, at 2am. It actually works awesome.

For any irreplaceable family photos, etc., those are also backed up to Amazon glacier.

Total cost of this solution: About 90 cents per month.

I use a powershell script and task scheduler to do the same. I also reflashed a WD mycloud to stock Debian and rsync to it (the mycloud comes with a WD red drive).

 

[Linkman]

I have a Windows box on 24/7 as it is an HTPC for the wife/kids. I have large external drives connected to that box. I use "syncbackfree" by "2brightsparks" software on the Windows side to pull any new files to those backup drives, each night, at 2am. It actually works awesome.

I'll second the use of SyncBackFree by 2BrightSparks. Excellent product. When I was running Windows boxes at home (prior to moving everything to some Linux variant(s)) I used SyncBackFree regularly for local and network backups.

 

[nojohnny101]

Hello
Ok thanks guys for all the suggestions. Do you guys keep these spare machines "offsite" and find backing up to not be too slow or unreliable?

So it is still looking like I'll have to have a spare "computer". I currently do not.

Does anyone know of using a raspberry pi with connected drives for this solution? (trying to cut down on the cost of a "new computer") for this. Or maybe I should just go with a low cost intel NUC or something like that.

Thoughts?

 

[nojohnny101]

Hello,
Or do you guys keep the spare drives in the space slots of your freeNAS box?

if anyone has any helpful links for reading further about solutions please pass them on!

 

[anodos]

Thoughts?

USB is terrible. No matter what solution you choose - avoid USB. You can buy a Dell T20 for $179 from Dell's website. Less expensive than a NUC.

 

[Mlovelace]

I backup my home freenas server to Amazon glacier. Can't beat the price $0.007/GB per month.

 

[Matthew Webb]

I've thought few times of using Crashplan as an offsite backup. This would use an Intel PC on a stick (http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/compute-stick/intel-compute-stick.html) connected to a usb drive. Put it in a friends house.

 

[Z300M]

I've thought few times of using Crashplan as an offsite backup. This would use an Intel PC on a stick (http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/compute-stick/intel-compute-stick.html) connected to a usb drive. Put it in a friends house.

From a quick scan of the reviews of the Compute Stick on Amazon.com, I'm thinking that an Intel NUC would be better.

 

[Matthew Webb]

From a quick scan of the reviews of the Compute Stick on Amazon.com, I'm thinking that an Intel NUC would be better.

Good point. :) Most of the negative comments seem to point towards Win10 updates killing the units. I wonder if installing Crashplan on a Linux based NUC would work?

Anyway, your suggestion which is a Intel NUC sounds like the way to go for this scenario. :)

 

[doodlebob]

Hello
Ok thanks guys for all the suggestions. Do you guys keep these spare machines "offsite" and find backing up to not be too slow or unreliable?

So it is still looking like I'll have to have a spare "computer". I currently do not.

Does anyone know of using a raspberry pi with connected drives for this solution? (trying to cut down on the cost of a "new computer") for this. Or maybe I should just go with a low cost intel NUC or something like that.

Thoughts?

Ask and ye shall receive. A user over at Reddit just release this Raspberry Pi ZFS backup solution: https://github.com/hughobrien/zfs-remote-mirror/

All credit goes to /u/anotherhue thread here: Reddit

 

[nojohnny101]

Hello!
Lol, great! Thanks for the Reddit, I'm going to check that out.

Now that I think about it, I guess before I posted this question I assumed that the hardware for a backup machine could be minimal, but do you guys have thoughts on this?

I primarily use my server to store movies, tv shows, and old family memories. There are about 3-4 people accessing it at any given time (rare they are all on at same time) mostly streaming movies over smb through a ssh tunnel.

But all the backup server is going to be doing is receiving rsyncs from the primary freenas box correct? It is never going to serving anything.

So are we talking 8gb of non-ecc ram being ok or can I do 4gb? I'm assuming the process isn't really going to matter at all in this case as well.

My current setup is:
ASRock 2550CD4I (Intel Quad-Core Avoton C2550)
2 x 8gb ecc ram
4 x 3TB NAS Red
Silverstone DS380B
Silverstone ST45SF (450w)

Am I right to think bare minimum? I mean I don't want to drastically increase change of the backup pool failing or becoming corrupted because of low ram but how do I really need and that same question in regards to the other components when the backup machine is going to be sitting 95% of the time and the other 5% receiving small chunks of data?

 

[Z300M]

Hello!
Lol, great! Thanks for the Reddit, I'm going to check that out.

Now that I think about it, I guess before I posted this question I assumed that the hardware for a backup machine could be minimal, but do you guys have thoughts on this?

I primarily use my server to store movies, tv shows, and old family memories. There are about 3-4 people accessing it at any given time (rare they are all on at same time) mostly streaming movies over smb through a ssh tunnel.

But all the backup server is going to be doing is receiving rsyncs from the primary freenas box correct? It is never going to serving anything.

So are we talking 8gb of non-ecc ram being ok or can I do 4gb? I'm assuming the process isn't really going to matter at all in this case as well.

My current setup is:
ASRock 2550CD4I (Intel Quad-Core Avoton C2550)
2 x 8gb ecc ram
4 x 3TB NAS Red
Silverstone DS380B
Silverstone ST45SF (450w)

Am I right to think bare minimum? I mean I don't want to drastically increase change of the backup pool failing or becoming corrupted because of low ram but how do I really need and that same question in regards to the other components when the backup machine is going to be sitting 95% of the time and the other 5% receiving small chunks of data?

Everywhere on these forums you will find that 8GB is specified as the "bare minimum." ECC RAM is strongly recommended, so don't skimp on that (and that's probably an argument against the Intel NUC that I suggested earlier); I don't know about the ASRock board you've mentioned, but some Supermicro boards simply do not work with non-ECC RAM.

 

[DrKK]

Everywhere on these forums you will find that 8GB is specified as the "bare minimum." ECC RAM is strongly recommended, so don't skimp on that (and that's probably an argument against the Intel NUC that I suggested earlier); I don't know about the ASRock board you've mentioned, but some Supermicro boards simply do not work with non-ECC RAM.

None of the boards that SuperMicro sells with the C222, C224, or C226 chipset (otherwise known as X10-series) will work with non-ECC RAM. They just won't POST. At least to my knowledge---maybe there's an obscure X10 I don't know about, but the usual X10's, the X10SL*'s, will not post on non-ECC RAM. That suggests that it is the server chipsets themselves (C22x), and not SuperMicro, that is responsible, for that requirement.

So my guess is that with the 1150 socket, regardless of motherboard manufacturer, if it uses the server chipset series (C222, C224, C226), then it probably requires ECC RAM to run.

 

[nojohnny101]

I guess the cost difference isn't as much between ECC and non-ECC. I'll go with that. Those specs i listed in my post were for my main freenas box.

Are my thoughts about the backup server correct in not needing as powerful CPU and maybe not a motherboard with so many features (although still that can accept ECC ram)?

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Are my thoughts about the backup server correct in not needing as powerful CPU and maybe not a motherboard with so many features (although still that can accept ECC ram)?

Yes.

 

[Ericloewe]

None of the boards that SuperMicro sells with the C222, C224, or C226 chipset (otherwise known as X10-series) will work with non-ECC RAM. They just won't POST. At least to my knowledge---maybe there's an obscure X10 I don't know about, but the usual X10's, the X10SL*'s, will not post on non-ECC RAM. That suggests that it is the server chipsets themselves (C22x), and not SuperMicro, that is responsible, for that requirement.

So my guess is that with the 1150 socket, regardless of motherboard manufacturer, if it uses the server chipset series (C222, C224, C226), then it probably requires ECC RAM to run.

C22x will gladly work with non-ECC RAM. X10SAE comes to mind.

The BIOS might be halting if it can't initialize the memory controller in ECC mode, but it seems unusual.