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Yet another NAS thread - backup question?

M

MrBasset

n00b
Joined
Jan 25, 2012
Messages
5
Hi,

I recently had a hiccup* with my home NAS which has me thinking about rebuilding it using a combination of ZFS (ZoL rather than FreeBSD/OI/A.N.other as I know Linux) and Snapraid.

I currently have:
  • 6x1.5TB - General data, backup files from other computers (mixed OS), images from photography, finances - the data I care about
  • 3x2TB - Currently used as media drive holding movies
  • 6x3TB - Currently used as media drive holding recorded TV shows, music and blu-ray rips.

I figure that I can use ZFS - RaidZ2 for managing the important data, and snapraid for the media disks.

I wanted to ask what other people are doing for backups?

My old strategy was to rsync important files to a D-Link NAS with a 2.5TB drive doubled up with Crashplan for an offsite backup. This only really (just) covered the data disk, and now that I'm living out in the sticks with a horrific internet connection; Crashplan is almost useless for large data sets. I have been considering buying 6x2TB drives for the data and turning the 1.5TB drives to a local backup using zfs send and some manner of scripted disk rotation (so RAID10 array, with two disks being unmounted, rotated, remounted).

Thanks in advance,
~MrBasset

Oh, hardware:
Supermicro X9SCM-F
32GB ECC RAM
Xeon E3-1230 V2
Arcea 1882LP (on its way out)
IMB M1015 (replacing the Arcea)
HP SAS Expander


* short story, moved country, powered on NAS. h/w raid dies, and backup files corrupted on disk (bit rot? bad Ethernet? who knows) and/or unavailable due to anaemic internet connection now I live in the sticks. Managed to rebuild the raid using dd_resuce to clone rejected disks, but now feeling exposed and discontent with h/w raid.
 
I move my system from software mdadm RAID6 to a 11-disk RAIDZ3 last year (on ZoL, because linux is what I'm familiar with). I never had problems with mdadm or any data loss with it, but I wanted the snapshot and send/receive capabilities, so I just tried it. Recently I moved again from the RAIDZ3 to single-disk pools with SnapRAID for my media library, because a single large array is inconvenient and consumes too much power when running all the time. My important data (mostly documents) still fits on a 3 TB disk, which currently is on a 3-disk mirror (I just had that 3rd disk available).

But this is just how I manage my data locally. SnapRAID can protect against a disk going bad or data corruption (while ZFS does not allow corrupted data to be read), but that system alone cannot protect against catastrophic hardware failure, fire or my accidently destroying something with root access (I accidently did a dd from /dev/zero to a data disk a long time ago, luckily there was a backup). The important data is replicated once a day by ZFS send/receive to a small system at my parents house and I have an offline copy of my media library on my old 2 TB HDDs with a snapshot that is a few months old. The important data is additionally usually on an external drive.
 
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I wish that I could have some sort of reliable off site backup - I am more often than not getting dial-up speeds for file uploads; completely unsuitable for backup, especially if I have dumped a bunch of photos onto the NAS.

I suspect that I'm going to have to settle for some manner of disk rotation, a fire proof box and hoping that I remember to change things around.
 
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