How to offsite backup data nightly and keep data in one location?

[barrybbenson]

Hello,

I am trying to plan out a FreeNAS setup for backing up a Mac and Windows computer for a business that runs out of my home (Location A). The problem that we face is a slow WAN upload speed (aprox 10Mbps) Thanks Comcast. The idea is to setup a small FreeNAS box as a "taxi" server to take nightly backups of the two computers at Location A and offload them to Location B, hosted at a local Datacenter. This isn't a replication, because we are looking for the data at Location A to be deleted after the data was successfully transferred. Keeping the data only at the Datacenter (Location B).

This design provides us with a nightly backup and disaster recovery. As of right now the business relies on an external HDD and a Mac which is very scary!!

Appreciate any input or thoughts for how we can make this happen. Thanks!

 

[garm]

This isn't a replication, because we are looking for the data at Location A to be deleted after the data was successfully transferred.

Why? 3-2-1 stipulates two of three copies to be local. If you only have two copies, it might not be enough.

 

[barrybbenson]

Why? 3-2-1 stipulates two of three copies to be local. If you only have two copies, it might not be enough.

Thank you for your reply. Well there the biggest one reason is the small server that will be onsite running FreeNAS will only have a few TB of storage. Thus not allowing for much if any retention. Whereas Location B has 16 usable TB. The server is also at a Datacenter in a fully redundant configuration. The FreeNAS box will be a VM on an ESXi host backed up with Veeam so I don't have to worry about hardware failure and losing any data.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

Well you could run FreeNAS on your local server and pick a rather short retention period, say, hourly snapshots and 7 days retention or even shorter, 3 days ...
Then on the target system at location B have a retention period of 4 weeks or similar.

That works out of the box with FreeNAS on both ends and it should also work with FreeNAS at location A and a FreeBSD server at location B - I have not tried that, yet. With both systems FreeNAS you can set up all of that via UI, no ZFS and shell wizardry required.

You could even pick a really short retention at location A, like one day. The downside is, if something breaks over the weekend, you will not be able to replicate, but you will have to start from scratch. Both ends of ZFS replication need a "shared history".

HTH,
Patrick

 

[barrybbenson]

Well you could run FreeNAS on your local server and pick a rather short retention period, say, hourly snapshots and 7 days retention or even shorter, 3 days ...
Then on the target system at location B have a retention period of 4 weeks or similar.

That works out of the box with FreeNAS on both ends and it should also work with FreeNAS at location A and a FreeBSD server at location B - I have not tried that, yet. With both systems FreeNAS you can set up all of that via UI, no ZFS and shell wizardry required.

You could even pick a really short retention at location A, like one day. The downside is, if something breaks over the weekend, you will not be able to replicate, but you will have to start from scratch. Both ends of ZFS replication need a "shared history".

HTH,
Patrick

Thank you for your help with this. I have yet to play with replication between two FreeNAS servers but plan to start this build very soon. I appreciate your help with this, hope I can put it in production now.

 

[garm]

the small server that will be onsite running FreeNAS will only have a few TB of storage

Okey, well depending on the backup tool intended that might not be such a big issue. ZFS snapshots enable you to have multiple versions of data with only the delta as overhead. What is the client tool to be used? Veeam?