Thoughts on an easy backup scheme for a home user

[kiriak]

I have set up a FreeNAS system on a very old PC, just for tests and to see what it is about (and possible migration from my Synology).

FreeNAS is totally new to me, as it is ZFS, snapshots, pools etc.
I understand that the best backup would be in another FreeNAS system somewhere else, but it is almost impossible for me to implement this now. Also, I want to avoid cloud.
(My data are about 1 Gb and probably would be less than 2 Gb in the next 5 years, but I’m concerned about data integrity and verification)
After experimenting with my 11.3 setup, I ended up with the following backup strategy

0. FreeNAS system with the data on Zpool of 2 HDDs mirrored. Snapshots of the various datasets.

1. Another Zpool will be usbHDD1, encrypted
import the usbHDD1 pool, run the task(s) to replicate snapshots from the NAS to usbHDD1
then export pool
and keep the usb HDD offsite

2. Repeat the step 1, for usbHDD2 and keep it offsite also

3. Every Friday coming home from my work, bring one of the 2 usbHDDs and run the corresponding task(s). Usb-HDDs will be rotating, so every time one of them will be offsite.
Will have more than one task for every usb HDD, for different shares that will change more or less often.

4. Out of paranoia and until I’ll become familiar with ZFS and its snapshots, every 4-6 months, I could pull the shares' data with my PC and keep them in another HDD formatted in NTFS or ext4, also encrypted and kept offsite.

I’m testing the above procedure and I found that it is easy for a novice like me and I think it is robust and safe.
Do you see any caveats?

 

[sretalla]

Do you see any caveats?

You're using a USB HDD (or 2 of them, actually), so expect the controller and/or enclosure/adapters to fail at some point. If those drives are 2.5", then you might want to consider what you will do if they both fail and you need the data (usually the board interface on those drives these days is USB3 micro, not SATA, so you can't just plug it in on a SATA port to recover).

My data are about 1 Gb and probably would be less than 2 Gb in the next 5 years

I guess you mean TB, otherwise just get 30 16GB USB sticks (for practically no money) and do a copy to one every day.

 

[Pitfrr]

... migration from my Synology

Couldn't you use your Synology as backup?
Most probably you can get rsync on it (not sure I don't know anything about Synology! So maybe not rsync but something else compatible with FreeNAS) and you have a nice backup solution (and automated).

And you can still go with off-site HDD but maybe on a less frequent base (in any case I think it's a very good idea to do so).

 

[kiriak]

You're using a USB HDD (or 2 of them, actually), so expect the controller and/or enclosure/adapters to fail at some point. If those drives are 2.5", then you might want to consider what you will do if they both fail and you need the data (usually the board interface on those drives these days is USB3 micro, not SATA, so you can't just plug it in on a SATA port to recover).

Those drives will be 2.5".
I didn't know this about the controller. Even if it is unlikely that they both will fail the same time when I need them (faulty or missing NAS), it would be a good idea to find a workaround to this.
Maybe I could buy a couple of spare 2.5 disks and use them with usb or esata enclosures.

I guess you mean TB, otherwise just get 30 16GB USB sticks (for practically no money) and do a copy to one every day.

Yes you are right, my data are about 1 TB.

 

[kiriak]

You're using a USB HDD (or 2 of them, actually), so expect the controller and/or enclosure/adapters to fail at some point. If those drives are 2.5", then you might want to consider what you will do if they both fail and you need the data (usually the board interface on those drives these days is USB3 micro, not SATA, so you can't just plug it in on a SATA port to recover).

Those drives will be 2.5".
I didn't know this about the controller. Even if it is unlikely that they both will fail the same time when I need them (faulty or missing NAS), it would be a good idea to find a workaround to this.
Maybe I could buy a couple of spare 2.5 disks and use them with usb or esata enclosures.

 

[kiriak]

Couldn't you use your Synology as backup?
Most probably you can get rsync on it (not sure I don't know anything about Synology! So maybe not rsync but something else compatible with FreeNAS) and you have a nice backup solution (and automated).

And you can still go with off-site HDD but maybe on a less frequent base (in any case I think it's a very good idea to do so).

I was thinking of giving it.

But it is a good idea to keep it.
It supports rsync.
I could make rsync backups to it, to have my files in another medium, in case I mess up the ZFS and snapshots.
As a plus, I could continue using it's cloud and mobile apps and have the FreeNAS as my main data vault to keep my data safe and verified.

On the other hand,
I will still need to keep 2 copies of offsite backups,
amd also, I would like to free some space (I live in an apartment) and simplify my setup.

 

[Pitfrr]

An other possibility is to have remote backup to the synology.
So it doesn't take too much space and you have off-site backup.

You also have to accept that off-site backups are a little less practical when it comes to restoring data if needed (that's why having locally a backup is quite handy sometimes). But then you have to compose with the constraints you have.

I will still need to keep 2 copies of offsite backups

Why would you need two backups off-site? (do I understand it correctly?)

 

[kiriak]

At first thanks to everyone for your help

An other possibility is to have remote backup to the synology.
So it doesn't take too much space and you have off-site backup. :)

You also have to accept that off-site backups are a little less practical when it comes to restoring data if needed (that's why having locally a backup is quite handy sometimes). But then you have to compose with the constraints you have.


Why would you need two backups off-site? (do I understand it correctly?)

remote backup to synology, maybe I could manage it, but not so easily.
The easier way for me to do it, since I have an openVPN server running on my router,
is to use the openVPN client on the Synology to rsync pull the data from the FreeNAS
(the other site do not have a VPN server)


I need 2 backup copies right now, because they are usb HDDs. So, at every time there would be one backup offsite.