Replication questions.

[Joe Red]

I tried searching, but after two days of not really getting my questions answered I decided to post in the forum.

First, is there a real world explanation of what happens when you set up replication? I'm not sure if the snapshot gets replicated or if the file structure is replicated from the snapshot.

Here's what I'm trying to accomplish. Both FreeNAS boxes have one volume, one dataset, and one CIFS share, taking up all available disk space. NAS-1/share/ is accessed by groupA. They store their data in various subfolders. NAS-2/share/ is accessed by groupB, sharing their data in subfolders. The subfolders are named differently (nas-1/share/eng/ & nas-2/share/mkt/ as an example). I want all subfolders to be available on both FreeNAS boxes.

Is that doable? Is there a howto I'm missing?

Thanks in advance for any help or advice.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Here's what I'm trying to accomplish. Both FreeNAS boxes have one volume, one dataset, and one CIFS share, taking up all available disk space.

Snapshots operate on datasets, either individually or recursively. Replication works on snapshots of datasets, either individually or recursively.

In your scenario, your top level datasets are both named "share", so they would clash. If they were named differently, you would be able to replicate one from NAS-1 to NAS-2 and the other from NAS-2 to NAS-1. But this assumes users on NAS-2 only need read-only access to the contents of NAS-1 and vice versa. Replication of snapshots is not the same thing as two-way synchronization.

 

[cyberjock]

Also note that there is no way to create a two-way synchronization with ZFS replication.

 

[depasseg]

If you made eng & mkt sub datasets, then you could replicate them back and forth as long as they weren't named the same thing.

Nas1
- share/eng

Nas2
-share/mkt

And then you configure the replication to go from nas1/share/eng to nas2/share/eng and from nas2/share/mkt to nas1/share/eng.

The limitation with this method is the replicated version should be read only, meaning users can't change the contents of nas1/share/mkt or nas2/share/eng.

 

[Joe Red]

Read-only is ok, I'm primarily wanting a backup.

Thanks, guys!