this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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I currently have two computers, one that has a big zfs raidz pool that I currently back everything up to. Right now, on my local computer I use rsnapshot to do snapshot backups via rsync to the remote zfs pool. I know I'm wasting a ton of space because I have snapshotting in the rsync backup, and then the zfs pool is snapshotted every day.

Does it make sense to just do a regular rsync into a backup directory on the zfs pool and then just rely on the zfs pool snapshotting for snapshotting?

Maybe eventually I will put the local machine on zfs and then just send the local zfs snapshots over, but that will take some time. Thanks!

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Don't use filesystem snapshots as backup. They're a safety measure against accidental deletion or casual modifications but they're not backups.

If you want backups then use a proper, dedicated solution like Borg Backup. It connects remotely, takes care of deduplication, compression, encryption etc. and you can fully verify the backups and manage them individually.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

This is the right answer. A better backup strategy is an actual backup strategy. Snapshots, drive mirroring, rsync copies, etc aren't really backups.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Have you tried a restore? A non-differential smap snapshot should be fine, but differential snapshots would make a restore difficult to impossible.

A zfssend and zfsrestore with a differential snapshot would be more traditional. If one put mbuffer in the middle, it would even be fast.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That is rsync.net's entire business model.

I still rclone my Borg repos there instead of relying on snapshots though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I also use rsync.net but as direct host for my borg repos, why rclone after?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It works the same either way. Borg does a lot of different backups on my home network. I also have more than just Borg backups that I want off-site, so an rclone of everything from that nas share once after everything else is done makes more sense than duplicating Borg everywhere. The rclone'd stuff can be used directly just like if it was put there by Borg itself.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It'd be worth checking out Borg as an alternative to rsync. Borg will handle snapshotting, and automatically de-dupe on a block-by-block basis.

I use it for all of my remote backups, and it provides a lot of quality of life stuff that rsync isn't going to handle.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

So for this, would i make another zfs pool on my remote backup server that is not snapshotted? Like, the problem i have is that i have snapshotting via rsync, but then the whole remote server zfs pool is further snapshotted so there’s a lot of redundancy.