I have been reading through the forums about using crashplan with unraid.  Seems like alot of people are having alot of problems, or have had alot of problems getting crashplan to work on Unraid.

 

I have considered using this method, as I have a win7 VM on top of Unraid, but I can concerned about backup speed / performance.

http://notworthrepeating.blogspot.com/2013/08/crashplan-backup-network-share-files-in.html#!/2013/08/crashplan-backup-network-share-files-in.html

 

This seems to be the most complete thing I see for installing Crashplan on unraid

http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/CrashPlan#Installing_CrashPlan_into_unRAID

 

But as I read through the forums, it seems like there are a ton of issues relating to memory usage, and CP not starting, or CP sending out updates

 

Thoughts?

I didnt have any issues at all setting up CrashPlan on unRAID.  Ive been using it for a couple of years. Even reinstalled a couple of times as I upgraded unRAID.

Steven,

 

Did you follow a similar install path as the link I posted?

 

Thanks for your feedback.

I've been running crashplan on unraid for years. That wiki link is largely based on a forum post I did.

 

It *is* fiddly to setup. But once running it seems fine.

 

I've had very few problems with it.

 

Some things to note :

 

- That guide is very old. It will still work (it's how I install and run crashplan on my own machine) but it's all to be done by hand. There are now various plugins that take some of the heavy lifting off you.

 

- However, and I can't say this without sounding offensive to those involved so I apologise in advance, I've seen lots of problems as a result of the plugins. People push the button to install crashplan and 'something' ends up not working. My opinion (which is worth very little) would be to do the hardwork and figure out how to install by hand without any plugins. It works and you also know enough to dig yourself out out a hole if necessary at that point. I've avoided the plugins personally.

 

- Running under windows would be fine. Be aware of not being able to backup directly from network drives, I think you will need to symlink / junction point in windows to fool crashplan.

 

If you're not comfortable doing the install of crashplan on unraid (and this is understandable) then so long as you don't mind the overhead of a windows machine it should be ok.

 

But crashplan on unraid is perfectly ok.

IIRC, I used the plugin for my last install.  I did a fresh install for my whole unraid since I was having to recalculate my parity anyway.

I've been running crashplan on unraid for years. That wiki link is largely based on a forum post I did.

 

It *is* fiddly to setup. But once running it seems fine.

 

I've had very few problems with it.

 

Some things to note :

 

- That guide is very old. It will still work (it's how I install and run crashplan on my own machine) but it's all to be done by hand. There are now various plugins that take some of the heavy lifting off you.

 

- However, and I can't say this without sounding offensive to those involved so I apologise in advance, I've seen lots of problems as a result of the plugins. People push the button to install crashplan and 'something' ends up not working. My opinion (which is worth very little) would be to do the hardwork and figure out how to install by hand without any plugins. It works and you also know enough to dig yourself out out a hole if necessary at that point. I've avoided the plugins personally.

 

- Running under windows would be fine. Be aware of not being able to backup directly from network drives, I think you will need to symlink / junction point in windows to fool crashplan.

 

If you're not comfortable doing the install of crashplan on unraid (and this is understandable) then so long as you don't mind the overhead of a windows machine it should be ok.

 

But crashplan on unraid is perfectly ok.

 

Im pretty tech saavy.  Just not with linux.  Although, I guess I cannot learn if I do not try, right?  In any event, I already have a VM running.  Do you think there would be a huge performance hit by using symbolic links?

No I doubt it.

 

No idea on the process of setting them up though I'm afraid.

 

http://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/Latest/Backup/Back_Up_a_Windows_Network_Drive

 

http://notworthrepeating.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/crashplan-backup-network-share-files-in.html

 

..look plausible.

I'm running CP via OS X 10.9 to backup my unRAID box as mounted shares speed is great, no real issues.

 

You will have to use a workaround to mount unRAID in Windows as it is the ONLY OS that CP doesn't support NAS backup - perhaps you should look at installing a Linux VM strictly for backup purposes of unRAID.

I got the symbolic links working in windows with zero problems.  I figure itll take 4 months or more for the initial 3.3TB sync...lol

I got the symbolic links working in windows with zero problems.  I figure itll take 4 months or more for the initial 3.3TB sync...lol

 

haha

 

It is all dependent on your bandwidth. I have found their speeds to be quite good, but I am running on a fibre connection with a 30 Mbps upload pipe.

Much like wisem2540 I've got it installed on my Windows machine with a symbolic link pointing to share on the unRAID box, works perfectly happily.  Just created a folder on Windows machine (C:\Backup).  Opened CrashPlan, set it to backup to that folder in the Destinations tab.  Then leave CrashPlan running, browse to and delete the folder you created, then open up a Command Prompt and enter

mklink /d "c:\backup" \\tower\backup

to make a link to my unRAID share, obviously substitute your local folder name, and server side directory in.

 

Leaving CrashPlan open while you delete the folder and make the link tricks it into thinking it's still just a local folder.

Been using Crashplan for a while now. Initially installed using boof's instructions (which I think the wiki is based off of). I'm not the biggest linux junkie and it was a bit of a learning curve but it helped with developing comfort using the command line. I ended up moving it to the cache drive without problems (app, not the data of course) Never had any problems although I do have a friend who seems to constantly run into RAM issues and it randomly stopping but I think he runs more plugins than I do. I believe that when it updates though, it stops and you have to restart it manually (now easily done from the GUI plugins), but that is usually obvious when my Windows machine won't back-up. I would agree that most likely the issue is with other plug-ins, perhaps not necessarily directly but last I read, unRaid doesn't like running out of memory and Crashplan crashing may very well be how it fixes that.

 

Symbolic link method is interesting, but then you have to have 2 machine running rather than just 1, if I am understanding it correctly.