Secondary FreeNas for backup

[alexg]

I'm currently running ZFS replication from RAIDZ1 pool to a backup pool that consists of a single drive on the same primary server. I'm thinking of moving the backup drive (pool) into a second server. I don't have a budget for brand new build and ECC memory.

My choices are:

• Keep backup pool in same server that has 12gb of ECC memory and plenty of processing power.
  
• Use old computer that has 6GB of non-ECC memory and run second instance of FreeNas with ZFS on single drive. If corruption occurs on replication pool, it will be detected and I can always rebuild it using primary server that uses ECC memory.
  
• Setup old computer as Linux machine and rsync

 

[Yatti420]

Just build a second pool (hopefully) with redundancy..

 

[panz]

I'm currently running ZFS replication from RAIDZ1 pool to a backup pool that consists of a single drive on the same primary server. I'm thinking of moving the backup drive (pool) into a second server. I don't have a budget for brand new build and ECC memory.

My choices are:

• Keep backup pool in same server that has 12gb of ECC memory and plenty of processing power.
• Use old computer that has 6GB of non-ECC memory and run second instance of FreeNas with ZFS on single drive. If corruption occurs on replication pool, it will be detected and I can always rebuild it using primary server that uses ECC memory.
• Setup old computer as Linux machine and rsync

I had the same problem. I opted to have 1 server with at least 2 redundant pools (RAIDZ2): it's better doing backups with a reliable machine instead of putting together a crap secondary computer (without ECC, etc.) that will destroy your data :)

 

[alexg]

Panz, I was thinking the same. Thanks. I can use the crappy secondary computer to setup Linux and do another rsync to it

 

[alexg]

Actually, it probably doesn't really matter if the old machine is Linux or FreeBsd or even FreeNas. Just thinking out loud, if I set it up as FreeNas I could use ZFS replication and preserve all user/groups and I could use it as test machine for new version of FreeNas.