Remote ZFS Mirroring for home users
reddit / BSD

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anotherhue · 2015-08-03 13:35

I wrote this up after I bought a new 2TiB HDD, stored all my data on
it, and then nearly lost it all from physical damage. Remote mirrors
are the only way to keep your data safe, and this should let ZFS
newbies enjoy the benefits. Please let me know if there's any errors
or missing information, etc. Thanks.

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bobobo1618 · 2015-08-03 18:27

If you have a FreeNAS system (many of us do), you can do this in ~15
clicks with periodic snapshots and replication.

Personally I just keep a rotating backup with a pair of encrypted
drives which I leave at work and swap every week. Means I get the
"remote" backup without actually streaming a few hundred gigabytes of
data every month.

I do also periodically backup to Google Drive though.

And for anyone who's interested in this kind of thing,
[rsync.net](http://rsync.net) can receive ZFS snapshots (which their
entire infrastructure is based on). It's a bit expensive but worth it
if you don't have a large amount of data.

Renting a cheap dedicated server like a [Hetzner](http://robot.your-
server.de/order/market/) box or one of [Online.net's smaller
servers](https://www.online.net/en/dedicated-server/dedibox-scg2)
works great too.

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anotherhue · 2015-08-03 18:41

The minimalistic approach I used was designed for very old hardware,
or something like a RaspberryPi. I'm having trouble imagining how you
generate hundreds of GiB every month!? Digital Video? My needs are
much more modest, maybe 1GiB / month, tops.

Also, the advantage of this, is that there are no operating costs. A
lot of things become easier with a little bit more to spend.

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bobobo1618 · 2015-08-03 20:25

That as a bit of a thoughtless exaggeration on my part, I deal more
with tens of gigabytes rather than hundreds. There are months though
where I'll spike over a few hundred easily though (images, video).

And yeah, it's a good way to take advantage of friends/family if you
can, just doesn't work for me because none of mine have particularly
good internet connections :/

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anotherhue · 2015-08-04 00:08

I come from a land of < 4 Mb/s so I understand.

I'm now thinking that with a little effort, two people could split
their drives and back up to each other in a similar way. Backup-
buddies or some such.

Thanks for reading!