Hello

 

I know the parity disk is here to prevent lost of data after a drive failure for example

But what in case of a robbery or lost during  a move.....where the full server can disappear!!!

 

Have you ever thought about that?

 

Thanks

no - not a stupid question. but also not a problem that unraid is designed to solve.

 

these problems are usually addressed by some kind of off-site backup like cloud storage.

 

hope this helps,

 

steve

 

no - not a stupid question. but also not a problem that unraid is designed to solve.

 

these problems are usually addressed by some kind of off-site backup like cloud storage.

 

hope this helps,

 

steve

It is why you should have two unRAID servers, and anything import redundantly stored off-site.

This is a very smart question...

most people think a raid (or unraid in this case) is a "backup". that is not the case. If you have drive failures, viruses, accidental erasing of a folder/file, and in an extream case theft also.

 

I have 3 storage servers in my house and one at my dads house. plus my dad has one at my house.  (I actually have more. But, for this example, we are concerned with 3)

 

I have 2 unraids, one is my main media server and holdes backups of my other servers. the second unRAID backs up the primary. they are almost mirrors of each other (i dont backup the backups of the other servers due to space one is 40TB and one is 60TB). I never directly access my second unraid. it is only used for backups to help prevent accidental deletetion.

now in case of fire or theft (i hate to see the guy try and take a rack of servers).. that data would be lost

forever (my blurays/dvd's that i ripped are actually in my storage unit so i would have those).

For my important documents, files, work related things, and all of my PC/Laptop backups... I save those to my WHS2011  (unraid would work a charm too). my WHS2011 is backed up 2 ways. #1 to a 3TB external esata drive that I can take with me. #2 it is also backed up to a second WHS2011 at my dads house via VPN.  On the other side of the coin, my dads WHS2011 is backed up to his second server at my house. You could use crashplan for this. I just use robocopy and a custom rbeyondcompare script. rsync would also work with 2+ unraid units.

OK....I was not thinking to build another Unraid Server, but more about a 4 bay JBOD enclosure that could fit 4 x 3TB

Any recommendation for a good enclosure......and cheap?

 

Hi - rather than start a new thread i thought i would add or continue with this one ....

 

Let me tell you the current situation - i have a HP N40L server with 5 data and 1 parity disc. Managed to get 6 disks in using info from this fourm. The server holds backups, music, documents and a LOT of movies.

 

The N40L is still on offer and for a total cost of £140 after cashback is a steal. I also have some 2TB drives and some smaller ones availalbe to use so here is what i thought .... Make another box that is just for backup, not on all the time and just to avoid any ultimate disaster. My bulk of my data changes only slowly (docs, some pics etc) so i will back up to my unraid server and am thinking of just having the other server at someone elses house and bringing it over on whatever basis and either doing a full backup (not much fun for 8TB of data) or incremental as limited changes - pretty basic ehhh. so now to several questions.

 

Is there much advantage in my case of using unraid on the second server or would it be fine to use something else (what??) just so i have a lot of drive space on which to dump the backup. This is DR only and using unraid would take up a whole disk of space for parity.

 

Full back up or incremental and using what, I know the basics but would welcome some input here

 

While i can bring the server home and plug it in it would be great to schedule and have the chance to do this remotly but dont want to have lots of learning, effort etc as have limited time to invest (but getting the server turned on at the other house is not a problem in advance of me wanting to do a backup). Is remote back up much of an issue? not sure how the person i am thinking of would like me messing with their rooter settings etc

 

There seem a lot of options and what i am looking for is thoughts and views of how to use spare disks (not enough to duplicate current setup) with the chance of a cheap server to put in place a fairly static backup

 

all input welcome :-)

For a purely back up unRaid with limited drive slots, you don't HAVE to assign a parity disk. It will be vulnerable to any disk failure, but if it really is a backup, and not the only location of the data, who cares? Critical data should be backed up more than one way anyway. Very few people generate enough truly unique material to fill multiple TB's, most stuff is easily obtainable by purchasing or downloading again in case of a data loss event. The really critical stuff should be occasionally reburned to the latest optical media and stored in a fireproof cabinet or bank safe deposit box.

Thanks - there is little that is truly irreplacable (pictures of kids, documents etc) and these are on unraid server, on an external drive in a safe and would be on this set up as well almost cetainly off site. Most is static and would just be painful and very time consuming so level of protection should just reflect that (movies and music). Unraid with no parity would be a cracking idea - why did i not think of that Dohh - and if big disks get cheap just throw one in and add parity later > brilliant ! and with the N40L server fill the 4 std slots and later use the optical drive bay for the parity disk

 

So what is the best way to do an inital back up from one unraid to another and then do incrementals when required (and manual is fine, does not need bells and whistles)

I use rsync and make disk to disk copies. See here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=13432.0. Others use rsync with user shares.

Disk to disk would only work if the disk set up was the same, right? i will have a few mixes of sizes of disk, overall space will be similar but not at a disk level (one of the good things of unraid being able to use different size disks and you can use what you have as a starting point). Also i am assuming share to share would deal with this itself by making use of the split level on the receiving machine and that the split levels etc on the sending and receiving machine do not need to be the same. for example 2TB drive on main machine with music would send info to backup machine with 2*1TB disks set to high water and it would sort itself out without any issues or user intervention?

 

It did occur to me that i would need another licence for the number of disks i would need to use, while i appreciate unraid needs to be paid for, and i have no problem with that for the functionality is there an alterantive option which is free which would just give me a large lump of data or would i then be looking at something like Ubuntu and just send the data to what would look like a PC with different drive letters and do everything manual (possible but by no means neat!)

 

Thanks

I thought about theft, fire, viruses and accidental deletion.

 

Regarding theft I am thinking about implementing some sort of theft-deterrant cage around the system; I can come up with something that would deter a thief from spending too much time trying to steal that case and just move on to another item in the house that is more easily stolen.

 

Regarding fire, I have a smoke alarm and I"m always home--I never really go on vacation.. so not too worried there---I'll just run outside with my NAS and a few other belongings   (If there is time) -- I'll keep backups of critical data in my car trunk (this dont' inlclude movies, television shows, music library).

 

Viruses and accidental deletion:  I am going to make most of my share's read only to the user account I am logged in as all the time on my computer.  I'll setup a read/write dropbox/dropoff location to put new things and then login with an administrative account to move things aroudn.. or just ssh/telnet into the unRaid server and move them by hand.  For those shares that are read/write all the time to my normal user account, I'll make sure all that data is backed up daily and moved offsite regularly (i.e. my car trunk).

Thanks for your input - dont know if you use windows or not but i also have a "sugarsync" cloud account - very good, very user friendly and is set and forget and for 5gig its free. This is another location i keep really critical stuff that works so well i often forget its even there !

 

The cloud would be a good solution for me but not sure how long it would take to get 8TB of data up there !

 

Theft proof cage .. interesting. Got a mental picture of a hamster cage over the server screwed into the wall. I could put the other server in the loft, not fire proof but not sure with all the other items to steal someone is going to be looking around up there and for my use as a back up location this could be an idea as then its already connected to the netowrk, just need to switch on and there it is.

I thought about theft, fire, viruses and accidental deletion.

 

Regarding theft I am thinking about implementing some sort of theft-deterrant cage around the system; I can come up with something that would deter a thief from spending too much time trying to steal that case and just move on to another item in the house that is more easily stolen.

 

Regarding fire, I have a smoke alarm and I"m always home--I never really go on vacation.. so not too worried there---I'll just run outside with my NAS and a few other belongings   (If there is time) -- I'll keep backups of critical data in my car trunk (this dont' inlclude movies, television shows, music library).

 

Viruses and accidental deletion:  I am going to make most of my share's read only to the user account I am logged in as all the time on my computer.  I'll setup a read/write dropbox/dropoff location to put new things and then login with an administrative account to move things aroudn.. or just ssh/telnet into the unRaid server and move them by hand.  For those shares that are read/write all the time to my normal user account, I'll make sure all that data is backed up daily and moved offsite regularly (i.e. my car trunk).

 

Keeping a drive in your car trunk may not be a very good idea, mainly because of the vibrations and constant pounding the drive will take. It will likely be dead by the time you need to recover anything off it. Unless of course you store it wrapped in a couple of towls or bubble wrap

 

Your "run outside with my NAS" comment gave me a mental image of nerds trying to carry a 60TB rackmount unRAID server out of a burning building. It would likely not end well for the nerd

 

I can't say I wouldn't try and do the same though... unRAID is life

I run an incremental backup program that backs up (daily) anything new or changed on my unRAID box to a drive on my main PC, then once a week those incremental archives are copied to one of two off-site backup sets (bare hard drives in antistatic bags). I keep one of those sets at home and then periodically exchange it with another set off site.  Before I would loose any data I would have to loose two drives in the unRAID as well as the same drive from each of the backup sets.  With fire, theft or flood the final off site set would still be viable, but with a tornado or meteor strike it might not...

 

The package I use to do this is "arcvback" which is a set of python scripts, it is available and documented here:

 

http://arcvback.com/arcvback.html

 

Right now I backup about 10TB of stuff with this onto two sets of disks that have about 5 or 6 disks in each set.  Since it allows for an essentially unlimited (the database eventually runs out of space, so then you need to restart the cycle) number of incremental runs. I've been going one to two years between restarting with a full backup.

 

Regards,

 

Stephen

 

your car trunk may not be a very good idea, mainly because of the vibrations and constant pounding the drive will take. It will likely be dead by the time you need to recover anything off it. Unless of course you store it wrapped in a couple of towls or bubble wrap

 

Believe it or not I got the car trunk idea from John C. Dvorak, lol. I think it's actually a great idea   Just make sure the data is on an encrypted volume, or encrypted.  That way if it gets stolen no one can get to your data.

 

Sure beats paying for offsite storage

no - not a stupid question. but also not a problem that unraid is designed to solve.

 

these problems are usually addressed by some kind of off-site backup like cloud storage.

 

hope this helps,

 

steve

It is why you should have two unRAID servers, and anything import redundantly stored off-site.

 

I agree, this is why I have two wives, one at home and one offsite  LOL J/K

Ok back to being serious here......

 

I don't want to lose ANYTHING, I know I can go hunt up the web for some of the stuff to reinstall/replace but I don't want to, that is why I archived it to unraid in the first place, but I know I can't continue to back up every little thing.

 

What  I would be most concerned with saving like most would be Photos and for me my music collection, some of which has been ripped from vinyl records (look it up kids...lol) from back in my days as a DJ and is not easily replaceable.

 

My issue with cloud services is getting this massive amount of data to them for the initial load (for the sake of this conversation lets ignore the this provider could disappear with your data argument) Shooting in camera raw format for the last couple years as well as my older JPGs has me sitting on nearly 200gb of photos alone and for most of us our upload speed is pretty crappy. I have multiple reduntant copies at home but in the case of fire at this point I am TOTALLY screwed. Have one drive in a fire resistant safe but I don't know that I really trust that it would be ok.

 

The car trunk idea is interesting if you modify it a bit, mount a small tool box or a bolt down box meant for securing firearms. Line them with foam and cut out the rectangle shapes for the drives. This takes care of vibration, but how would they hold up to the heat generated by the Florida sun?

 

I have a new unraid build sched for October which will leave my original as a backup, but this still does not solve my offsite problem. It would be great if some of these cloud services had the option to mail them a data drive to load but the added work would surely increase cost.

 

for off-site backup of critical files and those not-easily-replaceable... bank safe-deposit box?    Or, if data is encrypted, office,  relative or friends home?  (writable DVDs, or even a spare 1,2 or 3TB disk... don't need the entire server, just the disk)

for off-site backup of critical files and those not-easily-replaceable... bank safe-deposit box?    Or, if data is encrypted, office,  relative or friends home?  (writable DVDs, or even a spare 1,2 or 3TB disk... don't need the entire server, just the disk)

 

Very valid options, the lazy side of me realizes these will quickly become out of date as I "forget" to get the drive and update it. Still a much better option then losing everything. Maybe a hybrid option might be best, inital backup to a drive that is stored offsite with any new data being sent to cloud storage until I get around to updating the offsite drive......This might be an option.....this is one of those Greg House moments where this conversation somehow just set this lightbulb of in my head....

 

Thanks Joe L. !

 

Personally, I think what I would do is build another unRAID server or a RAID1 server that is easily portable. I guess you could setup a seperate user share on your primary box and only backup that share, just so it is easier to do future backups and you don't have to dig around through different folders. Building something into a case like an Array r2 would make it nice and portable (plus this case gives you expansion up to 6 drives if you ever feel the need).

 

Array R2 Mini ITX NAS Case w/ 300W SFX PSU

www.fractal-design.com/?view=product&category=2∏=42

 

You could do your inital backup at home then move this server offsite (perhaps a friend/family that doesn't mind you borrowing a little of their internet connection) and do online incremental backups.

I have a family member who says no problem to have a server sat in a spare room at their house so location solved, current offer for a HP N40L in the uk make this a real option.

 

What I would like now is a detailed and comprehensive "how to" of how to link 2 servers together at 2 locations with standard routers, no VPN etc. Is it relatively easy or is it something that is great as an option but you need to really know your stuff in order to deliver?

 

The point made earlier about the back up going stale due to not going to get the hardware and taking the time to refresh I think I have to admit in my case is true so an automated set and forget "personal cloud" set up somewhere would be great

 

A guide for noobies please :-)

What I would like now is a detailed and comprehensive "how to" of how to link 2 servers together at 2 locations with standard routers, no VPN etc. Is it relatively easy or is it something that is great as an option but you need to really know your stuff in order to deliver?

 

I think more information would help get you some suggestions, most important would be how much data are you looking at backing up? Don't worry about how much data you have at the moment as your first backup could easily be done onsite. The size of your incremental backups would be worth mentioning though.

My issue with cloud services is getting this massive amount of data to them for the initial load (for the sake of this conversation lets ignore the this provider could disappear with your data argument) Shooting in camera raw format for the last couple years as well as my older JPGs has me sitting on nearly 200gb of photos alone and for most of us our upload speed is pretty crappy.

 

I have a new unraid build sched for October which will leave my original as a backup, but this still does not solve my offsite problem. It would be great if some of these cloud services had the option to mail them a data drive to load but the added work would surely increase cost.

 

Crashplan does exactly this (if you're in the united states as a restriction I believe).

 

They will, for a modest fee ($125 or thereabouts - not sure if shipping is included), send you a drive you can do your initial backup to locally. You post it back and they will copy it to their servers at which point you then point your client at them and you pick up where you left off. You also, of course, have to be paying for their 'cloud' backup service though the prices are reasonable and competitive.

 

http://support.crashplan.com/doku.php/feature/seed_service#seed_your_initial_backup_to_crashplan_central

 

For the same fee they will also do the reverse and send you your backed up data on disk so you can restore quickly.

 

Crashplan has it's problems / issues as a service in general and I've never personally used their seeding service (I'm not in the USA) but I do use them to backup my own unraid data - for what it's worth.

 

Plenty of threads on here about Crashplan - howto's, general discussion and gotchas. Feel free to PM if you have questions you think I might be able to help with.

 

You can also use the crashplan client (for free) to backup to any other crashplan client in the world (if configured to do so).

 

This is a nice easy way to have a single setup / config that will automatically backup offsite to multiple locations and any combination of your own additional crashplan clients offsite and their own central cloud service.

 

I keep three offsite backups in this fashion. Two backups to seperate offsite locations that I run crashplan on and a third to crashplan themselves. All handled from the same single backup client.

 

The obvious scenario here is if you have a buddy you can do reciprocal offsite backups (disk space pending!) by each installing the free version of crashplan and then backing up to each other.

 

Or you can find someone with oodles of disk space who would be willing to let you do it to them. Heck, if you asked me nicely...

What I would like now is a detailed and comprehensive "how to" of how to link 2 servers together at 2 locations with standard routers, no VPN etc. Is it relatively easy or is it something that is great as an option but you need to really know your stuff in order to deliver?

 

A guide for noobies please :-)

 

Not sure what you're aiming for but the obvious thing that springs to mind here is rsync over ssh.

 

No fancy stuff - other than sshd running and rsync installed. Security wise data would be encrypted over the wire and you could set up firewalling at the router (or host although unraid makes that tricky) or just use sshd / tcp wrappers to only allow certain hosts to connect.

 

You could either hand roll rsync or use one of the many wrappers to provide some automation. rsnapshot springs immediately to mind but I'm sure there are others.

 

Google will be your best bet, but it's fairly common so should be lots there to help.

Firstly many thanks to all for info so far - but i think i need to p[rovide a little more detail

 

Firstly i am located in the UK

 

Initail data backup around 7TB but as mentioned this could be done local, follow up is only small stuff from general PC u8se (the bulk is movies pictures and music so all pretty static stuff and the rate of growth is small normally.

 

I have a 20meg down and 1 meg up cable connection

 

I would consider and all you can eat cloud service but how long would would circa 8TB take as an initail load? and to counter that, if its static stuff do i care?

 

The person  who has said they will host the other server knows no0thing about PC's but is happy for me to house the server there.

 

So i just need a way to be able to see the server when it is at another persons house and to send relativly small amounts of data to them to keep everything in sync, like making the other server my own cloud .....

 

I am pretty good at following instructions but linux is new to me and so is command line stuff, never used RSync etc so i have hardware and location but no idea how to join the two together in a way that is secure and simple - hence the request for a "how to" from those in the know - and if unraid to unraid is too complex i would be happy to run it manual from my PC and copy over stuff .... but if i have the possibility

 

Will read up where i can but if anyone can help or point me in the right direction i am sure this is something more people would like to be able to do