Looking for best practices for data backup

[cburling]

Hello. I have just switched from NexentaSTOR to FreeNAS and am very happy I made the switch. Much better performance and ease of use. I am using FreeNAS as iSCSI datastores for my VMware ESXi servers in my lab. I have a primary FreeNAS server running with Raid10 and a secondary FreeNAS server running with Raid5 plus spare. What I woudl like to do is have the primary copied to the secondary each night. This is my home lab for testing things so it is not busy after 7:00 pm usually and not used until around 8:00 am the next morning.

What I am wondering is which process woudl be best to do this copy? I have looked at RSYNC tasks, as well as replication tasks. But is there a better way, or recommended way, to make sure I have a good copy of everything from the primary?

Thanks in advance for your time in reading this and any recommendations/suggestions you can send my way.

 

[pirateghost]

When using 2 FreeNAS boxes, use snapshots and ZFS replication.

By "RAID10 and RAID 5", I hope you mean striped mirrors and raidz(1)

 

[cburling]

Sorry PirateGhost, yes on the stripped mirrors and Raidz(1). Setting up the snapshots and ZFS replication now.

 

[cburling]

Well, I am trying to create the Periodic Snapshots. Referencing the included image, I can manually create one for the nas1_vol2 dataset, but the nas1_vol1 creates and error message about no disk space. Looks like I may have screwed things up while creating the volumes. Can I fix this without having to redo the volume/dataset sizing?

 

[pirateghost]

I'm confused by your layout.

Did you seriously allocate ALL of your available storage to an iscsi target?

If you did, you are in for a world of pain...

 

[cburling]

I did. A stupid newbie mistake now that I have been looking around. I am going to move my VMs to my other FreeNAS system for now and redo my primary one. I have 6 3TB drives in it. I need about 4TB of disk for the iSCSI datastore. What woudl you recommend for my volume configuration? I thought I was doing the right thing by setting up the striped mirrors.

I really appreciate your input. Thank you.

 

[pirateghost]

Striped mirrors are the preferred layout for VM data store.

 

[tvsjr]

Do some searching, there are plenty of threads on this topic.

In short, for anything approximating reasonable performance with full data security:
Striped mirrors. No RAIDZn.
Dedicated, fast, enterprise-class SLOG device with power-loss protection (Intel S3700 is a good choice, there are others)
Do not exceed 50% utilization on your pool. If you need 4TB, you need an 8TB pool. With 3TB drives, you'd set this up as 3 2-drive vdevs. Keep in mind, this doesn't leave you much expansion room before violating the 50% rule.
A solid UPS with scripted shutdown is recommended as well.
You can't have too much RAM.

 

[cburling]

Thanks pirateghost and tvsjr. I now see the error of my ways and after searching and reading the forums, I believe I understand what I should have done. So I am moving all of my VMs to my secondary datastore and then will delete and rebuild the zfs structure on my primary FreeNAS server. Based on the recommendations I have seen and gotten, I will create a pool with four of my 3TB drives. From what I have gathered, I will do something like this:

zpool create nas1_vol1 mirror da0 da1
zpool add nas1_vol1 mirror da2 da3

This will provide me with a stripped mirror. I have an additional two 3TB drives, woudl it be an option to add them to the pool as well, or should I keep them as spares? I have seen a couple of examples using three mirrored pairs in a pool, but being new to ZFS, I am not sure if this would enhance, or hinder, the configuration.

Then, I will only use 50% of the available volume for my iSCSI datastore.

Going to take a while to copy everything, so will pick this back up in the morning. Have a great morning/day/evening wherever you are.

 

[pirateghost]

Don't use the command line to create the striped mirror array. The GUI will do it for you. Just create a mirror, and volume. Then create another mirror and extend the volume with that mirror.

 

[cburling]

Don't use the command line to create the striped mirror array. The GUI will do it for you. Just create a mirror, and volume. Then create another mirror and extend the volume with that mirror.

Got it. And thank you for putting up with the newbie stuff. :)