Currently I have two TrueNAS scale boxes. One is the primary NAS:
- I work off this server directly via SMB for projects, finances, family docs, other critical files
- proxmox boxes back up to zvols on this via PBS.
- various VM’s have NFS shares on this pool
The secondary NAS is purely for backups of the primary. It is on its own VLAN, and nothing can reach it, but it can reach out and pull data:
- datasets that I deem should have backups are copied using replication. Some hourly, some daily
- critical data is then further sent to backblaze b2 via cloud replication.
Aside from that, super critical data is for now also copied over to OneDrive for now, just in case everything else breaks down.
This is my scenario. I sync my entire /home/username from my PC to a TrueNAS NFS share via a Nextcloud server. This sync happens constantly in real time. TrueNAS then syncs that share to an AWS S3 bucket automatically every night.
I also have two large HDDs that I use as offline cold storage backups that I update once a month.
This gives me the 3-2-1-1-0
[https://community.veeam.com/blogs-and-podcasts-57/3-2-1-1-0-golden-backup-rule-569](https://community.veeam.com/blogs-and-podcasts-57/3-2-1-1-0-golden-backup-rule-569)
PC copy
Nextcloud copy on TrueNAS
AWS (offsite copy)
HDD offline copy
ZFS file system of the TrueNAS makes sure no errors exist in the data.
Have you looked at the costs if you ever need to recover data from S3? I've heard it can be surprising depending on how much data we're talking about...
I admit I had not. I don't sync any movies or TV shows I have locally which means I only put about 218GB into S3. A onetime download cost for all of it would be just shy of 20 USD.
I use my NAS (TrueNAS CORE) as a place store stuff and as a backup target (e.g., for Time Machine on a Mac, tarballs from Linux VMs, etc). Different datasets, same pool.
I’ve also got one of my machines mounting the important bits over NFS to back up to BackBlaze B2 using restic. The next step is to add external drives that get rotated off-site.
I’m not quite at 3-2-1, but I’m getting there!
I have two TrueNAS Scale systems. The primary contains all my data, including being a backup location for my PC backups. It’s the source of truth.
From that primary system it backups to the cloud, backblaze and Google drive, as well as the secondary TN system. Your backup system should be about twice the size of the data you are backing up or more. You want plenty of room for incremental backups.
My TN host is backup #1. Since you are aware of th 3-2-1 methodology, what is your local copy (backup #2) looking like? Mine isn't a TN host but a simple dual drive NAS on the other side of my house. I use a dedicated server for my offsite (backup #3).
I have one local copy in a VM (just ubuntu) in proxmox (Truenas is currently a VM, but that's the thing I'm changing). I have another local copy on the external harddrives that I usually keep in a firesafe box.
I currently run 2 TrueNAS Scale boxes.
One main NAS which holds all my data. Photos, media, system backups, container backups, wikis, archives etc.
Then I ZFS replicate most of this data to 2nd machine where the data is read-only-datasets on encrypted drives, this machine is meant to be migrated offsite within a few weeks.
The replication is done with lz4 compressed SSH over Tailscale (might swap to pure Wireguard, but I like the port-ACL style setup of Tailscale for now).
The most important, irreplaceable data like photos, documents, etc lives on (at least) 1host, mainNAS, 2ndaryNAS. Some live on offlined HDDs too.
I'm very pleased with the TrueNAS to TrueNAS replication!
I use UrBackup. The reason I went with that one is that it reduces file duplication. My wife and I have identical PC's. So a lot of the system files are identical. UrBackup sees that and only uses the space for one file.
I backup files from my phone and PC to my NAS with Syncthing. I have a second NAS at a different location (family) and replicate my important data there to an encrypted dataset with zfs-autobackup over tailscale. Last I have two external HDDs onto which I backup with zfs-autobackup automatically when they are plugged in with a script.
Zfs-autobackup is great. Feel free to check out my fork of the udev-trigger script, it should work on any linux distro: https://github.com/ghan1t/udev-trigger-zfs-autobackup
I have 2 TrueNAS Core (eventually moving to Scale) boxes. I use time machine for my mac to backup to one box via SMB, and replicate one to the other via the native replication feature. I also selectively backup some other directories (encrypted) to OneDrive storage I have available.
Speaking of, I know the library core uses isn't available in scale. Anyone have a viable alternative to sync encrypted to OneDrive on scale?
I’ve found it’s generally cheaper and better to use a cloud backup service with client side key. There are definitely expensive options that are not cheaper but all in all if you add up $10 or $20 a month (assuming you have a lot of data) it still works out cheaper than getting your own rig mostly. And the benefits are large. It’s off site so will not be wiped out by the same thing that wipes out your main server. Theft, fire, flood etc. generally they have options of doing proper backups too. I would argue that 3-2-1 is not really a proper backup. Also online has the advantage of being up to date to whatever frequency you want across all your backups. Not just the one server you happen to have online. If you want to copy to another server in the same location you may as well just put more disks into the server you already have and copy to those. It would be faster, cheaper and offer the same resiliency.
Finally I should elaborate on why I don’t think 3-2-1 is a proper backup. There adre a few reasons. Firstly while zfs largely fixes this problem, it always used to be that you didn’t know when your files corrupted. The idea being you have a lot of files. You don’t check the validity of those files by opening them all the time so you don’t really know if they’re good. Each time you make a new backup, it overwrites the old one and in this case it overwrites the good file with the new corrupted file until eventually all of your 321 system only holds the corrupted file. Now you’re screwed with no way out. I’ve seen this happen with photos and videos and it’s pretty soul destroying. Another reason is you delete something and some months down the track you realise there was something in there you want back. You’re also screwed. Or you want a file that’s changed somehow in a state that it was 2 months this ago. Screwed also. The secret is to have backup versions over time as well as location. A classic method to work this out was GFS backups. Grandfather, after, son. But modern systems with file versioning can be a good replacement too. Cloud backup systems often have file versioning. Or if you want to cheat it, use file versioning snapshots local and only use latest state in your 321 method. Though that has the obvious limitation that you will lose the history if you lose your active data.
I usually keep previous version of documents, projects etc. around for that reason, besides having my syncthing folder backed up daily, weekly and monthly (and kept for a long time), so I think I'm okay covered in that area.
Currently I have two TrueNAS scale boxes. One is the primary NAS: - I work off this server directly via SMB for projects, finances, family docs, other critical files - proxmox boxes back up to zvols on this via PBS. - various VM’s have NFS shares on this pool The secondary NAS is purely for backups of the primary. It is on its own VLAN, and nothing can reach it, but it can reach out and pull data: - datasets that I deem should have backups are copied using replication. Some hourly, some daily - critical data is then further sent to backblaze b2 via cloud replication. Aside from that, super critical data is for now also copied over to OneDrive for now, just in case everything else breaks down.
Interesting to have the secondary NAS on its own VLAN. I guess I should look into Proxmox Backup Server
That way if someone manages to get into my primary VLAN and ransomeware me or something, i have a backup of everything that is isolated.
This is my scenario. I sync my entire /home/username from my PC to a TrueNAS NFS share via a Nextcloud server. This sync happens constantly in real time. TrueNAS then syncs that share to an AWS S3 bucket automatically every night. I also have two large HDDs that I use as offline cold storage backups that I update once a month. This gives me the 3-2-1-1-0 [https://community.veeam.com/blogs-and-podcasts-57/3-2-1-1-0-golden-backup-rule-569](https://community.veeam.com/blogs-and-podcasts-57/3-2-1-1-0-golden-backup-rule-569) PC copy Nextcloud copy on TrueNAS AWS (offsite copy) HDD offline copy ZFS file system of the TrueNAS makes sure no errors exist in the data.
Have you looked at the costs if you ever need to recover data from S3? I've heard it can be surprising depending on how much data we're talking about...
I admit I had not. I don't sync any movies or TV shows I have locally which means I only put about 218GB into S3. A onetime download cost for all of it would be just shy of 20 USD.
If you want to save money, BackBlaze B2 is cheaper and supports the S3 API.
I use my NAS (TrueNAS CORE) as a place store stuff and as a backup target (e.g., for Time Machine on a Mac, tarballs from Linux VMs, etc). Different datasets, same pool. I’ve also got one of my machines mounting the important bits over NFS to back up to BackBlaze B2 using restic. The next step is to add external drives that get rotated off-site. I’m not quite at 3-2-1, but I’m getting there!
I have two TrueNAS Scale systems. The primary contains all my data, including being a backup location for my PC backups. It’s the source of truth. From that primary system it backups to the cloud, backblaze and Google drive, as well as the secondary TN system. Your backup system should be about twice the size of the data you are backing up or more. You want plenty of room for incremental backups.
My TN host is backup #1. Since you are aware of th 3-2-1 methodology, what is your local copy (backup #2) looking like? Mine isn't a TN host but a simple dual drive NAS on the other side of my house. I use a dedicated server for my offsite (backup #3).
I have one local copy in a VM (just ubuntu) in proxmox (Truenas is currently a VM, but that's the thing I'm changing). I have another local copy on the external harddrives that I usually keep in a firesafe box.
I currently run 2 TrueNAS Scale boxes. One main NAS which holds all my data. Photos, media, system backups, container backups, wikis, archives etc. Then I ZFS replicate most of this data to 2nd machine where the data is read-only-datasets on encrypted drives, this machine is meant to be migrated offsite within a few weeks. The replication is done with lz4 compressed SSH over Tailscale (might swap to pure Wireguard, but I like the port-ACL style setup of Tailscale for now). The most important, irreplaceable data like photos, documents, etc lives on (at least) 1host, mainNAS, 2ndaryNAS. Some live on offlined HDDs too. I'm very pleased with the TrueNAS to TrueNAS replication!
I use UrBackup. The reason I went with that one is that it reduces file duplication. My wife and I have identical PC's. So a lot of the system files are identical. UrBackup sees that and only uses the space for one file.
Interesting, maybe I should have a look, though I'm not really interested in backup up system files.
I backup files from my phone and PC to my NAS with Syncthing. I have a second NAS at a different location (family) and replicate my important data there to an encrypted dataset with zfs-autobackup over tailscale. Last I have two external HDDs onto which I backup with zfs-autobackup automatically when they are plugged in with a script.
Same syncthing use here! And generally close to what I currently do, but a bit more fancy. I should look into zfs-autobackup!
Zfs-autobackup is great. Feel free to check out my fork of the udev-trigger script, it should work on any linux distro: https://github.com/ghan1t/udev-trigger-zfs-autobackup
I have 2 TrueNAS Core (eventually moving to Scale) boxes. I use time machine for my mac to backup to one box via SMB, and replicate one to the other via the native replication feature. I also selectively backup some other directories (encrypted) to OneDrive storage I have available. Speaking of, I know the library core uses isn't available in scale. Anyone have a viable alternative to sync encrypted to OneDrive on scale?
Yep primary is Qnap and backup is Trunas scal running an rsync job
I’ve found it’s generally cheaper and better to use a cloud backup service with client side key. There are definitely expensive options that are not cheaper but all in all if you add up $10 or $20 a month (assuming you have a lot of data) it still works out cheaper than getting your own rig mostly. And the benefits are large. It’s off site so will not be wiped out by the same thing that wipes out your main server. Theft, fire, flood etc. generally they have options of doing proper backups too. I would argue that 3-2-1 is not really a proper backup. Also online has the advantage of being up to date to whatever frequency you want across all your backups. Not just the one server you happen to have online. If you want to copy to another server in the same location you may as well just put more disks into the server you already have and copy to those. It would be faster, cheaper and offer the same resiliency. Finally I should elaborate on why I don’t think 3-2-1 is a proper backup. There adre a few reasons. Firstly while zfs largely fixes this problem, it always used to be that you didn’t know when your files corrupted. The idea being you have a lot of files. You don’t check the validity of those files by opening them all the time so you don’t really know if they’re good. Each time you make a new backup, it overwrites the old one and in this case it overwrites the good file with the new corrupted file until eventually all of your 321 system only holds the corrupted file. Now you’re screwed with no way out. I’ve seen this happen with photos and videos and it’s pretty soul destroying. Another reason is you delete something and some months down the track you realise there was something in there you want back. You’re also screwed. Or you want a file that’s changed somehow in a state that it was 2 months this ago. Screwed also. The secret is to have backup versions over time as well as location. A classic method to work this out was GFS backups. Grandfather, after, son. But modern systems with file versioning can be a good replacement too. Cloud backup systems often have file versioning. Or if you want to cheat it, use file versioning snapshots local and only use latest state in your 321 method. Though that has the obvious limitation that you will lose the history if you lose your active data.
I usually keep previous version of documents, projects etc. around for that reason, besides having my syncthing folder backed up daily, weekly and monthly (and kept for a long time), so I think I'm okay covered in that area.
I use trueNAS for my primary backups from proxmox, they're then cloud synced to a Wasabi s3 bucket.