I am investigating backups to both a cloud service and backup TrueNAS server and hoping for some help.
Replication
When testing replication backups, I don’t see any option to restore specific versions or individual files. I assume replication talks at the dataset level so individual file restore is not possible. Is the correct method to restore replication jobs by restoring the entire job and grabbing the specific files needed?
Regarding versions, is it possible to restore a specific version or snapshot? I have an hourly replication job that has run multiple times. When I select restore and the corresponding replication task gets created, there is no option to select anything other than source & destination (no versions or snapshots).
Cloud
I plan to use either Backblaze B2 or Storj. I am leaning Storj since I want to use client side encryption. With Storj, it is able to restore specific versions and encryption is native. With Backblaze B2, the client side encryption makes it difficult to restore a single file, plus the SYNC / COPY modes are a bit lackluster in terms of avoiding accidental deletion. B2 would make sense if using server side encryption since it can download individual files and the retention settings apply.
Does this align with other’s experience with cloud backups? B2 is well established and the design of Storj makes me hesitant to go that route, but the experience and capabilities seem superior to B2.
Frankly, I use all 3. I have a backup NAS offsite with full snap shots, I also use STORJ since it is cheap and also VERY slow if you have lots of small files (like docker, etc) (Though the fix for this is going into Golden Eye I believe). I also use Backblaze B2 and it works great, each has their own set of issues, for a bit I also used sync.com since it has file versioning. If you are the only user, syncthing is a great option to backup nas to nas, since it has versioning.
For my users and main file storage, I use Nextcloud, which also gives me some per file versioning for myself and users(I tend to only access my data through Nextcloud).
I’ve tested B2 a bit more. I like the fact that directories and file names aren’t encrypted. That makes it easier to at least see if a specific item is still accessible before performing a restore. I have not once restored a specific file version in the past 4 years with my current cloud provider, so I consider it more of an insurance policy anyways.
Replication has me confused. I have a single replication task currently between datasets on the same TrueNAS server. All snapshots were purged before this task was created. There are now snapshots with some showing ‘will be deleted automatically’ for the retention, while some say ‘will not be automatically deleted’. The replication task and corresponding snapshot task all have retention policies in place.
Is this expected behavior? Perhaps some snapshots aren’t flagged as scheduled for deletion in case they are being held for replication consistency.
