Please help with snapshot idea

[maxse]

Hey guys,

need some guidance. So I finally figured out a great way to back up unraid to remote unraid. 
remote server is always on running minio. 
I’m running rclone from main server with minio as a target with no problem. And it’s working well!

 

my only issue now is to make it a true backup. I need to somehow be able to take snapshots on the remote machine so I can roll back in case of a ransomeware that I miss or accidental deletions etc...

 

I understand it can’t be done on unraid. But I would be willing to even have an always on windows VM and map the minio share to the VM and then take snapshots daily of just that one share. 
 

is something like this possible to set up that would make restoring the share to a snapshot easily? Like how Synology does it basically. 
 

would really appreciate some input and guidance. 

[JorgeB]

32 minutes ago, maxse said:

I understand it can’t be done on unraid.

It can be done with Unraid, I do it for all my backups, you need to use btrfs and take snapshots disk by disk, since each array device is an independent file system. 

[binhex]

It can be done with Unraid, I do it for all my backups, you need to use btrfs and take snapshots disk by disk, since each array device is an independent file system. 

I'm assuming the same sort of procedure would work if/when unraid natively supports zfs, right?

Sent from my CLT-L09 using Tapatalk

[JorgeB]

6 minutes ago, binhex said:

I'm assuming the same sort of procedure would work if/when unraid natively supports zfs, right?

Yep, I have a script snapshotting a share in all disks with the same name, e.g. TV@2020-10-10-11-58, that snapshot is then sent to the backup server using send/receive (zfs also has this) disk by disk, the data in that snapshot can then be accessed together as a user share.

 

For the OP, he just needed to have btrfs on the backup server, snapshot the share(s) in all disks they occupy with the same name, then they can than be accessed the same way.

[maxse]

Hmmm, that's interesting. Everything I have read said that btrfs on unraid is not as stable as XFS. This backup is only used for backups and is using minio. So snapshotting all disks will basically have the same result as doing the share.

However, how simple would it be to roll back if there is an issue and are the backups hidden somewhere by the file system like on a synology, for example, so in case of ransom ware it's easy to revert back in time? And do they take up minimal space is that correct?

 

Sorry about all of the questions it's just that everything I came across basically points to lack of reliable snapshots is a down side of unraid. I've had unraid for 6 years so have been happy with it, just as my storage grows and backup evolves....

[JonathanM]

31 minutes ago, maxse said:

Everything I have read said that btrfs on unraid is not as stable as XFS.

IMHO, that's not an accurate statement. The file system itself is ok, it's just that it's not forgiving of poor hardware or mismanagement.

[maxse]

6 hours ago, jonathanm said:

IMHO, that's not an accurate statement. The file system itself is ok, it's just that it's not forgiving of poor hardware or mismanagement.

Thanks. since I'm a newb I'll keep the file system the way it.

Any ideas about some other program I could use in a windowsvm? With a GUI ideally, but if not that's okay too?

How can I pull this off?

[JorgeB]

16 hours ago, maxse said:

However, how simple would it be to roll back if there is an issue and are the backups hidden somewhere by the file system like on a synology, for example, so in case of ransom ware it's easy to revert back in time?

Like mentioned the snapshots can be a user share, or a folder inside a user share, wherever you want, you can accessed them using the normal way you access any other data on Unraid.

 

16 hours ago, maxse said:

And do they take up minimal space is that correct?

They don't take any space until you change the original data.

 

16 hours ago, jonathanm said:

The file system itself is ok, it's just that it's not forgiving of poor hardware or mismanagement.

Yeah, also btrfs single profile filesystem, like it is with array devices, is much less likely to cause issues than pools, since many of those in Unraid are caused by members having errors or dropping without the users noticing.