FREENAS CloudSync B2 Storage

EJPark

Cadet
Joined
Mar 31, 2020
Messages
1
Will Freenas only Push New or modified files to the cloud; or does it repeat the whole back up every time it is set to run?

What is best practice for File Lifecycles? If set to keep all versions will it just continually sync the same file to my cloud storage and take up storage space?
 
Joined
May 2, 2017
Messages
211
My experience is that it only pushes new or changed information.

I use B2 and let my buckets handle lifecycle rules. In my case, I have created a bucket to match each of my datasets on FreeNAS. So, for example, I have a "Documents" dataset on FreeNAS, and I let the "Documents" bucket on B2 "Keep All Versions". So my resume, for example, always has every version available on line. For a "Movies" dataset on FreeNAS, the "Movies" bucket on B2 is set to "Keep Only The Last Version". If I edit some metadata on a few movies, it only seems to push the changed movies, not all of them. Subsequent backups get much shorter, as only changes appear to upload. And this way, I save storage on B2 because I don't need versions of movies or music, etc... They don't generally change.

Once a year or so (whatever is best in your case), I'd make a hard drive local copy of your datasets and keep somewhere safe like a family members house for safe-keeping. If you have a fire, God forbid, it would be a terrible time to realize you can't recover your online B2 copies. This is especially true if you encrypt your backups on B2 like I do.

If you trust B2 and don't encrypt, it's much simpler. And for what it's worth, you could use B2 to periodically make a "Snapshot" of your bucket for long-term safekeeping, but you'd have to pay for storage to keep it up there, or download it to another location or online provider...
 

StoreMore

Dabbler
Joined
Dec 13, 2018
Messages
39
@EJPark If you have your Cloud Sync Task set to sync and your B2 settings to "keep all versions" (the default B2 option). It won't upload a new copy everytime the sync task is run on your FreeNAS. The sync process knows it the same file and hasn't changed so its just 1 copy. If you make a change to the file on FreeNAS the next go around it will see a different version of the file and upload it to BackBlaze (now 2 versions that would be kept forever).

To the first part of the your question, "What is best practice for File Lifecycles?" The real key is figuring out how long after a file is changed (which essentially meaning a deleted file & a new file version) how long you want that deleted or versioned file to stay around? If you have ever used BackBlaze's standard PC backup software the default is 30 days.

With B2 you can decide to keep files around for a specific number of revisions or a certain number of days after deleted. If you aren't talking about tons of data maybe you can just leave the default and not worry about it. Or, if you have hundreds of GBs/TBs/etc that does change frequently maybe it makes more sense to choose something else.

I hope that helps!
 
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