Cloud Sync: time machine sparsebunde to B2

TrueNAS General
1

Hi

Using Scale 24.

I have an SMB share for my time machine laptop backup. Works fine.
I also have a Cloud Sync to a B2 bucket once a day that pushes the timemachine sparsebundle offsite.
I’m wondering how reliable this is in terms of using the cloud sparsebundle for recovery. Right now the bucket file size is about 25% larger than the file on the local truenas smb share.

Anyone have experience with this?

Thanks

2

You’ll want to grab the sparsebundle when it’s in a quiesced state (no active backups in progress). We have a time machine preset for “multi user time machine” shares that does automatic ZFS snapshots for you. You can try to work from the snapshot for your backup strategy rather than trying to use the live share data.

2 Likes
3

That makes sense. Do you know if I can ‘convert’ the smb time machine share to the “multi user time machine” share? Or should I focus on just setting up snapshots and work from there?

Cheers

4

Check the B2 lifecycle settings. By default it will keep every state. That is probably why it is bigger there than on your NAS.

5

Thanks both of you for your replies. @Sara I beleive that was the issue - I changed the lifecycle setting going forward.
@awalkerix I’m new to zfs snapshots - would the the snapshot alone be enough for a restore OR should I copy up the full sparsebundle and then begin pushing up snapshots?
Thanks