Backing up entire unraid server to another server

[Alfred14]

Hi all,

 

After having a catastrophic failure of my main unraid server losing all my data i am looking to try and prevent this from happening again so i am going to set up another server to 'mirror' the main one and am asking what the best method for doing this would be?

 

Ideally i would be able to issue a Wake on LAN command to get the backup server running transfer the new changes and then shutdown when finished so i can save power, anyone know the best way to achieve this?

 

 

[garycase]

I have a scheduled task on my Windows desktop which (a) turns on both my main and backup UnRAID server (it actually turns on 2 UnRAID servers and my backup server);  (b) waits 2 minutes (to give the servers all time to boot -- you could adjust this as needed);  ©  runs SyncBack with profiles that do the backups;  and then (d) turns off the servers via ssh using PLink.

 

Works perfectly -- and doesn't require ANY system be on 24/7 => the UnRAID boxes are all off until; and the Windows box is in S3 sleep state until it wakes up to do the scheduled task.

 

Turning on the servers via WOL is done with a simple wol utility [ https://sourceforge.net/projects/wake-on-lan/ ]

 

Turning them off uses a single PLink command for each server ...

S:\Downloads\Putty\Plink.exe -ssh -pw <password> root@<servername> powerdown

 

Note:  The "powerdown" at the end should be "poweroff" if using 6.2.1 without the Powerdown plugin

 

The delays simply use "timeout n" ... where n = # of seconds

 

SyncBack is a very nice synchronization utility.  I use a paid version, but the free version is all you really need.

http://www.2brightsparks.com/freeware/freeware-hub.html

 

[uk100]

Remember that a simple sync/mirror-type backup won't protect you if you delete files by mistake from your primary storage.

[garycase]

Remember that a simple sync/mirror-type backup won't protect you if you delete files by mistake from your primary storage.

 

You can provide protection from this by setting SyncBack to not delete files from the backup server that are no longer on the primary server.  That's how my system is set up.

 

[uk100]

Yes, I did that myself for a while when I used SyncBack. Got fiddly as I was moving/renaming files a lot. Had to purge deleted files every so often by doing a 'mirror and delete files no longer on source'. Although I think it is possible to set up Syncback to do incremental backups which makes it a bit easier to manage.

[garycase]

I have a separate set of profiles set up to do "mirror and delete files no longer on source" ... but it's not the one that runs with my automated backups.    I run those "once in a while" to clean out all the deleted files I'm sure I don't need anymore [it's set to only purge those that haven't been accessed in the last 60 days].

 

[bnevets27]

Really hope that this one day (sooner rather than later) would be a built in feature of unRAID.  Seeing as it's core purpose is a file server and with the known fact that unraid isn't a backup in of it's self. 

 

Unraid to unraid automated backups should be a core feature. 

 

And if your reading this limetech,  it could increase sales by having more people having two licenses.

 

Sent using Tapatalk

 

 

[nealbscott]

I too like "Unraid to unraid automated backups should be a core feature. "

 

Even better if the 'other unraid' server can be offsite at a friends house.

 

[JonathanM]

I too like "Unraid to unraid automated backups should be a core feature. "

 

Even better if the 'other unraid' server can be offsite at a friends house.

That would require some flavor of services to traverse NAT connections. It's not really straightforward to connect 2 machines on separate networks. It can be done, but it's not easy to automate. Dynamic DNS + VPN would do it. Then you would have people complaining about how long it takes to back up, or complaining that unraid is killing their internet connection, either clogging bandwidth or data cap limits.

 

I think site to site backups is best left to the individual to implement, because there really is no single fit solution.

[garycase]

... I think site to site backups is best left to the individual to implement, because there really is no single fit solution.

 

Agree.  It's hard enough to convince folks that they even NEED to backup ... let alone trying to set up VPN configurations that do the backups over the internet.    And the bandwidth involved for multi-TB backups would indeed overtax most folk's upload speeds.