SMB3 Backup

[SecCon]

Looking in to what can be accomplished with Unraid, and due to the limited time the trial license is active, I ask for your suggestions before even installing it. Prepped the USB, it is inserted in the Server, just want to sort out a few things first.

 

I require a running backup - currently 11TB data and growing - from Unraid (main FileShare, SMB3) to a NAS (Asustor - backup File Share, also SMB3).

 

That should happen once per day and should be mirror, as in keeping a catalog of all the files, deleting those who are no longer on the Unraid, and copying over those who are, to the NAS. Just like my Windows backup app does. 

 

What do you guys use?

 

I have bad experience with non-gui applications, like rsync and even with Syncthing, just can't wrap my head about the commands and the Syncthing GUI looks nice, but only after you have all that setup under the hood. https://docs.syncthing.net/intro/gui.html which I cant figure out, spent hours testing between two SMB shares on my local lan, never got it right..

 

Edited April 17, 2023 by SecCon

[JonathanM]

5 hours ago, SecCon said:

should be mirror,

I would rethink that strategy, as it will propagate any and all corruption and accidental deletions, probably before you can catch them. Much better to have a real backup with versioning.

[SecCon]

Not sure I can do that yet. Space on NAS is limited to 14,4TB and upgrade of that storage won't happen until later this year.

The intended Unraid Server has 21,8TB, but obviously I need to keep used space limited to below the max backup capability.

 

In any case, what app would you say I would be able to manage for backup? 

Edited April 18, 2023 by SecCon

[SecCon]

So is anyone willing to share how you backup between SMB shares, one of those shares running on an Unraid server?

 

It is most certainly a dealbreaker for me. Maybe I should make a support ticket?

[Kilrah]

Luckybackup, rsnapshot, freefilesync are good options you can look into.

 

Syncthing needs to be running on both machines so that can work but only if it's available as an app on the Asustor. It's trivial to set up as long as you realize it's "local" on each side, no need for any smb shares. Not sure how it deals with TBs of files, I'm only using it for small sync sets but it does have version / deleted file retention functionality.

Edited April 19, 2023 by Kilrah

[SecCon]

Luckybackup, 0.5.0, (that is still beta according to normal versioning standards) 
https://sourceforge.net/projects/luckybackup/

https://luckybackup.sourceforge.net 

Last update 5 years ago. 

> No thanks.

 

rsnapshot, 1.1.6

https://rsnapshot.org/faq.html

https://github.com/rsnapshot/rsnapshot
Active.
Seems like CLI and SSH only.

> No thanks.

 

FreeFileSync, 12.2, active, an old goodie that seems to have been around a respectable amount of time. Did not know it was "ported" to Docker

https://freefilesync.org
https://github.com/kilrah/unraid-docker-templates/blob/main/templates/freefilesync.xml

The app is obviously active, but via VNC? I guess one would have to, since there is no web based UI. Curious implementation. One might as well run it on a Virtual Windows and let that handle it as a separate instance. 

> Note to self, read up more and test.

 

Syncthing can not run on both machines, so that explains my failures with it, but the documentation states that it can run as PULL or PUSH which to me was equal to having it on the FileShare server, pushing files to the NAS, but never got it to work, for what it seems obvious reasons.

 

 

Open for more suggestions.

[Kilrah]

2 hours ago, SecCon said:

Luckybackup, 0.5.0, (that is still beta according to normal versioning standards) 
https://sourceforge.net/projects/luckybackup/

https://luckybackup.sourceforge.net 

Last update 5 years ago. 

It's just a GUI for rsync, does what it needs to do. The container referenced in CA is regularly updated (7 days ago).

 

 

2 hours ago, SecCon said:

The app is obviously active, but via VNC? I guess one would have to, since there is no web based UI. Curious implementation.

Very common in the Unraid world. Luckybackup does the same.

 

2 hours ago, SecCon said:

One might as well run it on a Virtual Windows and let that handle it as a separate instance. 

Sure but then you need to dedicate RAM and storage for a VM, maintain it etc... The point of dockerizing GUI apps with novnc is that it uses a fraction of the resources, essentially only the storage the app and required libs need (usually <1GB) and the RAM the app needs instead of a full blown OS.

 

 

2 hours ago, SecCon said:

Syncthing can not run on both machines

 

Asustor's page suggests it's in their apps? Maybe not for your device.

https://www.asustor.com/app_central/all_apps?page=2&type=20&model=&media_mode=

[Zeroeth]

You could try resilio-sync.

 

I've been using both luckybackup (local backups) and resilio-sync (offsite backups) for a while now and both work very well.

 

 

[SecCon]

1 hour ago, Kilrah said:

Asustor's page suggests it's in their apps? Maybe not for your device.

https://www.asustor.com/app_central/all_apps?page=2&type=20&model=&media_mode=

Mine is indeed elderly, I did not see Syncthing among available apps. The OS version jumped to 4.* last year I think, but mine keeps on 3.* due to age, yet it still works perfectly well and I have upgraded disks 3-4 times since I bought it. As long as it get updates...

 

1 hour ago, Zeroeth said:

You could try resilio-sync.

 

I've been using both luckybackup (local backups) and resilio-sync (offsite backups) for a while now and both work very well.

 

That looks like a serious contender, well worth a good checkup.

Edited April 19, 2023 by SecCon

[SecCon]

I made a small test on ResilioSync and while it seems to work I am NOT NOT NOT a fan of creating share links via their site and what seems like having to download apps on local devices to connect to the shared library. Then again I would of course only use the app on the fileshare server... and it keeps nagging about upgrading license.

 

May have missed something here of course, the test was rather small and limited since I do not yet have the server reconfed.

Edited April 22, 2023 by SecCon