Duplicati backup Truenas to USB drive?

[ragametal]

Can the Duplicati plugin use an external USB drive as a target for the contents of a truenas dataset?
or
Can it use a samba share as source and an USB drive as target?

The idea is that i can backup my data to another media (because raid is not a backup, snapshots are not a backup either). External USB drives are somewhat affordable and practical since, if they are formated in exFAT, their content could be accessed from any computer that has Duplicati installed.

My plan is to leave this USB drive permanently plugged into the truenas server. I know people in this forum tend not to like USB drives but a home user or a small business cannot afford an ideal solution such as replication to another truenas server or to use Tape backup.

 

[ragametal]

After researching and reading the official documentation on the Duplicati website, it appears that i was able to answer my own question.

It turns out Duplicati can use any drive that is accessible from the system it is installed in. Duplicati calls them "Storage providers".

When an USB drive is being used as a storage provider they recommend to use the options

Code:

--alternate-target-paths=path-of-folder-where-the-drive-is-mounted
--alternate-destination-marker=path-of-marker-file-inside-USB-drive

These options will check if the USB drive is mounted before it tries to make a backup to avoid saving files directly to the system folder when no USB drive is mounted to it.

Now, i just need to learn how to properly mount a usb drive in truenas and if it will boot properly when this drive is not attached. But that is a topic for another thread.

I hope this helps somebody else but, based on the slow traffic of this particular post, it appears that not many Truenas users rely on Duplicati for their backup needs.

 

[flashdrive]

Hello @ragametal

thank you for sharing.

I am looking into how to do an incremental backup onto a periodically attached USB HDD myself.

What I have in mind:

ZFS has a replication option which is supposed to be very good, as I have heard. I need to read more into it:

e.g.

How to use snapshots, clones and replication in ZFS on Linux

In the previous tutorial, we learned how to create zpools and a ZFS filesystem or dataset. In this tutorial, I will show you step by step how to work...

www.howtoforge.com

 

[Samuel Tai]

I do this myself. I use a USB3-SATA adapter for an external disk, which I use as a replication target.

 

[Redcoat]

I am looking into how to do an incremental backup onto a periodically attached USB HDD myself.

You might find @Arwen 's resource and its discussion interesting in this regard https://www.truenas.com/community/resources/how-to-backup-to-local-disks.26/ if you haven't already seen it.

 

[flashdrive]

@Samuel Tai and @Redcoat

What a fantastic reaction time upon posting - I will have a look into the link.

I couldn't find it during my initial search.

 

[ragametal]

@flashdrive I thought about the ZFS replication feature but I'm not sure if that solution is the right fit for my needs. One of the main reasons I want to use Duplicati is the fact that it can use exfat partitions (which i'm still researching how to mount from within a jail). This means that in case of a catastrophic failure, i could just plug my USB drive into any computer that has duplicati installed and access my data.

With the ZFS replication on a portable drive, I could only access my data from systems compatible with ZFS.

Mind you, I'm not an expert by any stretch and I'm very open to suggestions.

 

[flashdrive]

@ragametal
I get your idea.

For me personally it is about ZFS in the first place. So I want to have the external drive running ZFS as well.

Think of it this way:

If your main storage is compromised and the external USB is your one and only backup - then my priority is to get another backup and the the main storage back to normal asap.

Working from the backup and loosing that as well is the real catastrophe.

 

[ragametal]

@flashdrive , I see your point.
I was also going to do a secondary backup to a remote location at a friend's house to give me more chances of recovering my data.

Loosing my backup drive during a recovery job is a real concern of mine as well. Thank you for pointing this out.