How are you using Crashplan?

[RichTJ99]

Hi,

I had an active crashplan subscription with its cloud backup. My plan expired & I was going to renew it & figured I would see what/how you are using Crashplan with Freenas?

I know there is a plugin & saw people talking about using a VM for crashplan to keep it more up to date.

Are you using it so that Freenas is the crashplan 'host' and all windows PC's in the house backup to the freenas/crashplan box?

I am a little confused about usage. Should I renew & use crashplans offsite backup? Its $150 for the year.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[Nick2253]

I use CrashPlan with only my FreeNAS server, so I pay only $60/yr.

What I do is backup all of my networked devices (routers, servers, desktops, etc) to a "Backup" share, using a variety of programs. Then I have CrashPlan on FreeNAS backup that "Backup" share.

 

[adrianwi]

I'm running a CentOS 6.7 VM in a VirtualBox jail. This mounts a number of NFS shares to datasets on FreeNAS to the /mnt folder. CrashPlan is configured to backup the /mnt folder and sub folders.

Has been working fine for a good few months, but having said that I don't think CrashPlan has been updated from 4.70 for a good few months either. It always used to break when running in a FreeBSD jail when they forced an update :D

 

[RichTJ99]

So you are both using crashplan with their online storage?

Is that what most people do? I wasnt sure if people used crashplan as an app on each device with the data being stored on freenas.

 

[RichTJ99]

I use CrashPlan with only my FreeNAS server, so I pay only $60/yr.

What I do is backup all of my networked devices (routers, servers, desktops, etc) to a "Backup" share, using a variety of programs. Then I have CrashPlan on FreeNAS backup that "Backup" share.

What are you using on your desktops to backup to freenas?

 

[RichTJ99]

I'm running a CentOS 6.7 VM in a VirtualBox jail. This mounts a number of NFS shares to datasets on FreeNAS to the /mnt folder. CrashPlan is configured to backup the /mnt folder and sub folders.

Has been working fine for a good few months, but having said that I don't think CrashPlan has been updated from 4.70 for a good few months either. It always used to break when running in a FreeBSD jail when they forced an update :D

Does Centos give you a gui or are you doing it all commandline? Do you also send your data to crashplans servers?

 

[adrianwi]

I've installed CentOS with a GUI, but I'm sure you could do it from the command line (if you knew what you were doing!)

I'm backing up about 2.9TB of files (mainly documents, pictures, music, home videos) to CrashPlan Central.

 

[Nick2253]

The advantage to doing a VM with the GUI is that CrashPlan becomes entirely self-contained: you can just VNC into the Linux server to do all the CrashPlan management. The downside is that the extra processing/memory of the GUI is now being done with resources that could otherwise be used for FreeNAS.

 

[RichTJ99]

So I had the $150 / year family plan but maybe I should get an individual plan & have a VM dedicated to backing up the freenas server.

Do you all feel comfortable with sending your data off site or is it a moot point these days?

 

[RichTJ99]

Sorry - also to confirm - no one is using the feature which allows you to backup data from your desktops to another PC with crashplan running on it?

Example, I have three PC's & a Freenas box. I could designate that the freenas box is the data repository and the three pc's send their data to the freenas box. Skipping crashplans servers all together?

 

[Nick2253]

Honestly, I don't feel comfortable unless I'm sending my data off site. In a perfect world, I would control the remote location, but I don't have the resources to afford that.

 

[adrianwi]

Agreed! Keep at least 3 copies of data that's important, with one copy off site (in CrashPlan).

All my desktop/laptop computers backup important files to my FreeNAS1 box, which is also the primary storage for my media files. All datasets are backed up locally to another FreeNAS2 box, with the important ones backed up to CrashPlan.

So my important files exist in at least 4 places (desktop/laptop, FreeNAS1, FreeNAS2 and ownCloud) although some also exist on more than desktop/laptop using ownCloud :D

 

[RichTJ99]

Do you map your windows directories to the freenas box? I know you can redirect your desktop, documents, downloads, etc. I would expect you would have a performance penalty though. Also if the freenas box happens to be down that could cause issues.

 

[Nick2253]

I don't do that for the exact reason you mention: I don't want my Windows desktops tied to the FreeNAS server. In a perfect world, everything would be running all without problems, but I'm only me when it comes to my home IT support, and I don't want that pressure hanging over me. When I have to take the FreeNAS server down, it's much easier to make sure that people aren't watching movies/listening to music than it is to make sure everyone is logged out of their machine.