Snapshots and CIFS Previous Versions

[ChiknNutz]

I have snapshots enabled, three of them actually. I have them set as follows:

Every 15 minutes and keep for 12 hours
Every 6 hours and keep for 2 weeks
Every 1 week and keep for 2 years

Except for the interval and retention, they are identical in nature. They are all set to work on the main volume and are recursive.

As far as I can tell, they are working within FreeNAS as intended. However, from within a windows folder when I go query for Previous Versions, it seems to only recognize the first set (15 mins/12 hours). Any idea why this is and how to fix it?

 

[zambanini]

search the forum, it is a limitation you can not change.

 

[ChiknNutz]

Well crap. So how do folks go about using snapshots when set up in this manner?

 

[anodos]

Option 1
Select the snapshot task that you want to present through "previous versions". "Every 6 hours and keep for 2 weeks" is a logical choice. Present this one through samba. Honestly, every 15 minutes is probably a bit excessive for a windows share. Windows does lots of client-side caching so be able to roll back changes unless they have auto-save configured or are actively and frequently saving (every 15 minutes?). Maybe reduce the number of tasks to "Every 1 hour and keep for 2 weeks" and "Every week and keep for 2 years". Then present the hourly snapshot task.

Option 2
Use a single snapshot task and something like @fracai zfs rollup script. https://github.com/fracai/zfs-rollup

Option 3
Write your own samba VFS module that has the behavior you want.

 

[ChiknNutz]

Regarding Option 1, how do I go about "presenting this one thru Samba?" That sounds programmatic or script-ish ;-) It appears that since the first on I created is the 15 mins/12 hrs one, that is the one that Windows sees. Yeah, 15 mins may be excessive, I have no problem increasing that. I just assumed that by having these three, that they were all working in unison and that Windows saw them all. It wasn't until I went to restore something that I realized it was only seeing this one snapshot set.

 

[ChiknNutz]

Never mind, I believe I found it. I simply have to select the appropriate snapshot in the CIFS share, right?

 

[anodos]

Never mind, I believe I found it. I simply have to select the appropriate snapshot in the CIFS share, right?

Correct