Opinions about my plan for offsite zfs replication

[glauco]

I'm thinking of buying a mini pc, setting it up as a replication target for my TrueNAS Core and placing it at my sister's house to achieve offsite backup.
I'll be telling you what my plans are and please, feel free to chime in with your observations.
I need something silent and heat-resistant that my sister could unknowingly mistreat, like this Beelink EQ12: Intel N100 CPU, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, a small NVME SSD for the OS and a 8TB SATA SSD for storage. No storage redundancy, I know, but I can live with that. It's an offsite backup after all. A backup I've neglected for years and I want to remedy that! It's got not one but two fans! I don't expect much cooling, but it's the best I could find in this form factor.
As for the OS, considering that I'll be replicating from TrueNAS Core, should I stick with Core or can I install Scale?
Thank you for your time.

 

[ChrisRJ]

[..] and a 8TB SATA SSD for storage. No storage redundancy, I know, but I can live with that. It's an offsite backup after all.

This is a somewhat common view, but I strongly disagree. In my view an off-site backup is your last line of defense. It is only needed when something has gone catastrophically wrong. In such an event, at least I want to be as certain as possible that this backup is intact and data can be restored.

 

[ParasiteTown]

As for OS, you can choose TrueNAS Core or TrueNAS Scale. TrueNAS Core is a more mature and stable OS, while TrueNAS Scale is a newer OS with more features. If you are not sure which OS to choose, I would recommend starting with TrueNAS Core

 

[glauco]

@ChrisRJ , thanks for your opinion, I understand where you're coming from, but still I think my solution is adequate for my needs.
If in the future I want more redundancy, even from a price to performance standpoint, in my opinion it makes more sense to set up another mini pc at some other relative's house rather than add a redundancy drive to the first offsite backup.

 

[jlpellet]

I think that your proposal will work but has some risks. In my real-world IT experience auditors do not consider a backup to be valid until a sample of the backed up data has ben verified good. The real risk I see is no description or process to ensure your offsite backup is intact & recoverable. Bit-rot is real - I've seen it. Also, I see no mention of a "cold" backup for protections against malware encryption. My backup strategy in summary is master copy with automatic daily backup to 2 TrueNAS Core hot backups, with bimonthly backup to local cold spare (USB HDD/SSD) & rotating monthly backup to offsite cold spare (again USB HDD/SSD) physically stored at an alternate location. The bimonthly backup takes ~10 minutes since it is incremental. The monthly takes ~45 minutes, including travel time. But I freely admit I am more paraniod about data safety than many. Good luck.

 

[glauco]

@jlpellet , thanks for your opinion. Cold backup, right! It's the easiest and less expensive route but somehow I forgot about it! You definitely have a bulletproof backup strategy, congratulations!

By the way, I forgot to mention that my drives are all Samsung 8TB QVO SSDs that support self-encryption (they're SED's), which I've enabled and rely upon instead of using zfs encryption, to make it simpler. Am I doing it wrong? Would you add zfs encryption on top for good measure?

 

[jlpellet]

Thanks for the feedback. Personally, I would not double-encrypt from both a low value-add and possible complications. Honestly, from my POV, encryption protects against data theft, which is a completely separate issue than backup. Since I'm not particularly concerned about consequences of theft in my personal data, I have no usefull experience at home. Good luck.