Flash Boot drive automated backup (cloud or local)

[Sbellins]

Hi, is it possible to add a freature that automatically backups the boot flash drive (or only the essential config files) to some cloud service on a schedule?

If on cloud is not possible or difficult to do also on a local path will be ok.

 

It also have to be easy to configure from the GUI and provvide differents schedule (like once per week, or once per day at "select the hour). Aslo backup have to be incremental (with the date in the name of the file) and a way to configure it to keep only the last "select number" of copy to save space.

[Hoopster]

3 minutes ago, Sbellins said:

Hi, is it possible to add a freature that automatically backups the boot flash drive (or only the essential config files) to some cloud service on a schedule?

That is a service Limetech has hinted at offering.  No timing has been announced but they have mentioned it.

 

In the meantime, the CA Appdata Backup/Restore plugin also has an option to backup the flash drive on a schedule with many of the options you enumerated.

[Energen]

So in a roundabout way I do what you want to do, although it's a bit of setup and not quite 'out of the box' ready.

 

I've got a Dropbox docker container running, and I've got a user script that runs nightly...

 

#!/bin/bash

/usr/bin/rsync -avXHg --delete /boot/ /mnt/user/Dropbox/unraid_BootUSB_Backup;
chmod 777 -R /mnt/user/Dropbox/unraid_BootUSB_Backup;

 

Essentially this just copies the boot drive to my dropbox folder, it's not compressed (easily done), and is just kind of a just in case... I use CA Appdata Backup also but in the event that "something" unforeseen happened and my array was offline and the boot drive was dead having the CA Backup on the array does me no good.

[Hoopster]

6 minutes ago, Energen said:

having the CA Backup on the array does me no good.

Which is why CA Appdata Backup/Restore allows flash backups to be mapped to unassigned devices disks or remotes locations which are not on the array.

 

I send mine to an external NTFS drive so it can be read from Windows if needed.

 

[Sbellins]

8 hours ago, Energen said:

So in a roundabout way I do what you want to do, although it's a bit of setup and not quite 'out of the box' ready.

 

I've got a Dropbox docker container running, and I've got a user script that runs nightly...

 

 

 

 

Essentially this just copies the boot drive to my dropbox folder, it's not compressed (easily done), and is just kind of a just in case... I use CA Appdata Backup also but in the event that "something" unforeseen happened and my array was offline and the boot drive was dead having the CA Backup on the array does me no good.

Tanks, this is something that can be done without too much problems.

 

8 hours ago, Hoopster said:

Which is why CA Appdata Backup/Restore allows flash backups to be mapped to unassigned devices disks or remotes locations which are not on the array.

 

I send mine to an external NTFS drive so it can be read from Windows if needed.

 

Having it on the array means that i can use a windows vm (or a container or something) and sync it on the cloud as soon as the files arrive on the array

[ken-ji]

I have rclone plugin installed and run this using the User Scripts plugin

#!/bin/bash
#argumentDescription=Backup Location
#argumentDefault=/mnt/disks/VMs/appdata/backupFlash

BACKUPDIR=$1
[ -z ${BACKUPDIR} ] && BACKUPDIR=/mnt/disks/VMs/appdata/backupFlash

mkdir -p ${BACKUPDIR}
tar -C /boot -zvcf ${BACKUPDIR}/`hostname`-flash-`date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S`.tgz --exclude config/super.dat --exclude 'previous*' --exclude 'bz*' --exclude "System Volume Information" .

#cleanup - leave upto 14days worth of backups
find ${BACKUPDIR} -ctime +14 -delete

if [ -x /usr/local/bin/rclone ]; then
  # rclone sync ${BACKUPDIR} Drive:backupFlash --verbose
  rclone sync ${BACKUPDIR} OneDrive:backupFlash --verbose
  rclone sync ${BACKUPDIR} Dropbox:backupFlash --verbose
fi

The script will tar + compress the entire USB flash drive into a timestamped file - skipping config/super.dat (since my array drive order are absolute and easy to rebuild) and the bz* files and store in an unassigned drive location and finally upload to One Drive and Dropbox

 

[Cpt. Chaz]

if you have an external desktop computer on your server's network, you can use the google drive desktop app on it, and then mount that folder as a remote smb share. much less work than many of the cloud containers i've seen (tho i don't know about the rclone plugin), and you don't have to run it through someone's private server to use it! also, CA backup is great, but it doesn't backup a zipped flash version, or do time stamping. i wrote a script that might be helpful for your use case here.