Hello All,

My first post here, so please be gentle!

First off I love UNRAID, I've been using it for several months and so far so good. Easy to use and easy to administer! Great work to all involved in its development and communities.

Okay so the question, I'm looking for advice on backups, I'd like to backup to a cloud service. I'm looking to backup both some local shares on my NAS and Backup/Restore Appdata (which is the docker backups) or backup the docker containers directly to the cloud (is this possible)?

I'm happy to pay for a cloud service to do this, but the key is simplicity and reliability...

Any advice?

this is possible...
I would recommend making a staging area for your backups especial when using additional backup systems and plugins like the appdata plugin. This way you have 1 folder to send, receive.

Depends on your cloud service and what they accept for transferring files to and from the cloud service.

I'm a fan of sftp. I've even built and support a updated docker instance for sftp.
Their are Other solutions, usually linux bash scripting with rsync
or if your cloud server supports it, docker application running such as synching.

then the question is who is instating the transfer?
is the cloud service connection to unraid (and how?tail scale?vpn?other) or is unraid connecting to the cloud and transferring?

it is best practice to use the 3-2-1 backup strategy

Essential 1 single important file needs to be on 3 disks, on 2 separate server systems and 1 remote location that is not in house.

this guarantees that you have 3 locations for the same file, that if a system goes down you still have access adn in the event of everything in house (a fire as example) that the file exist offsite for a restore
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/

do you have a cloud service in mind?
using the CA rclone per example can also connect to cloud systems like Amazon s3 and other. although, configurations can be triky at times.
or using something like lucky backup
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kc4rIdUhdc

there are pre-existing scripts as well via other community member. Example:
https://forums.unraid.net/topic/126028-simple-automated-offline-backup-script/

Edited October 8, 2025Oct 8 by bmartino1

The cloud is just some one elses computer...

What I do. I have a ring network between friends and a few servers.
We use Unifi and Site Magic to make a vpn connection to each network.
so i can go to \\there newrok ip and hit their system.
they can go to \\ and hit my system

in this ring network we each have a backup folder that get sftp each week/month etc to sftp transfer files via machine key (ssh keys used instead of a username and password)

this way i can run things like the appdata plugin on unraid that makes a unraid flash drive, backups my dockers configurations. and if needed, can tell the sftp rsync to copy xyz. user script plugin to cron schedule scripts.
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E18752_01/html/819-5461/gbchx.html

We also implement zfs and use zfs snapshots. I can use sftp and send a zfs snapshot of data to the remote's system...

This way if someone has a issues we can atleast be online and have data access.

Edited October 8, 2025Oct 8 by bmartino1

Hey @bmartino1 ,

Thanks for the info! I will watch the videos.

Really appreciate the reply :-)

S