Unraid Appdata Backup Strategy

[regular-tract6433]

I'm looking for some advice on my backup plan.

 

On unraid I have a standard array and a zfs pool with one disk of redundancy. None of the disk in the standard array are formatted to zfs. I run a number of nextcloud-aio in docker, a number of other docker containers and a home assistant vm. I am using the docker compose plugin to manage most of my containers (the nextcloud-aio manages some itself.

 

I have a share on the zfs pool for nextcloud's data and another for general appdata. I also have a share on the array called backup. This backup array has folders for different things that get backed up. Nextcloud-aio backs itself up to folder here using borgbackup. The home assistant vm also manages it own backups to here. I want to setup a way for the appdata to also get backed up here, preferably without having to stop the containers.

 

Here is what I have planned that I would like some feedback on. I plan to make a script that will daily take a snapshot. It will then clone the snapshot. After that it will use some sort of incremental backup software (like borgbackup or duplicati) on the clone to back it up to the array.  When the backup is complete I can destroy the clone and start the process again the next day (I would probably leave the clone until the next day and destroy it first thing). I will probably keep a weeks worth of snapshots on the zfs pool but don't want them to be my main backup.

 

• Does this seem reasonable?
• Am I over complicating something?
• Any preferences between tool like borgbackup and duplicati?
• From the research I have done on bogbackup and zfs, if nothing in the appdata changes the clone will be identical. This seems to me to indicate that borgbackup won't have trouble deduplicating when it makes its backup of the appdata clone. Is this right?

 

I know this isn't a full backup yet. I still need to come up with a strategy to replicate the backup share off the array. For right now I will probably copy it to a portable drive I have periodically. I do plan to make an offsite unraid server somewhere (a relatives house) at some point.

 

Thanks for any feedback.

Edited December 17, 2023 by regular-tract6433
Added not about clone destroying

[trurl]

25 minutes ago, regular-tract6433 said:

a way for the appdata to also get backed up here, preferably without having to stop the containers.

There is a plugin for appdata backup

[kizer]

I use the Backup/Restore Plugin which shuts down my dockers and then puts them on my Array in a Share Called CacheDriveBackup and then turns them back on. I also have it set to backup each docker individually so I can restore individual dockers if there is a need. I wrote a simple basic script so I can restore any tar file as needed when I need to restore an individual docker. 

 

I do not backup my docker.img at all. I can easily restore it simply by rebuilding it and installing my dockers. 

[trurl]

17 hours ago, kizer said:

I do not backup my docker.img at all. I can easily restore it simply by rebuilding it and installing my dockers. 

 

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/manual/docker-management/#re-create-the-docker-image-file

 

https://docs.unraid.net/unraid-os/manual/docker-management/#re-installing-docker-applications