Help creating secure online backups for computer illiterate family members

TrueNAS General
1

I use my truenas server to backup all my of family’s files via kopiaUI.

I want to also back it all up to the cloud Someone Else’s Computer. I am thinking backblaze B2.

My concern is that some older family members cannot be convinced, or cannot comprehend (and are flat out unwilling to sit there for more than a minute for me to teach them), how to use proper safety protocols / passwords. I tried, but getting someone nearing 70 to properly sit down and learn esoteric computer knowledge is a challenge.

I wanted to get some advice on how to securely handle their stuff.

My main idea thus far is to:
in my main pool (called tank) create an encrypted vdev called fam
then in it I can create sub vdevs such as
/tank/fam/dadsmb/
/tank/fam/dadbackup/
/tank/fam/momsmb/
/tank/fam/mombackup/
etc.

then I could backup /fam/ to backblaze B2 without giving anyone else (not backblaze, and not my family) access to the encryption key… which will only ever be used in case the server somehow loses the data despite the parity.

2

Thinking about it further.

they don’t even use the smb shares for its intended purpose (storing things they want to protect from bitrot. such as family photos).
they either not use it at all. or occasionally toss over some copies of files as “extra backup”.

maybe cancelling their smb shares alltogether is a good idea.
Let them manage and keep all their own files on their own computer.
with kopia then backing it all up (with deduplication) to the server.
I can set up proper password for kopia which I will manage.

still use the
/tank/fam/dadbackup/
etc format
And then back the entire /tank/fam/ folder to backblaze b2

for bitrot protection… do something locally using ZFS or BTRFS in mirror mode?
possibly get them a USB “drive”. preferably one that has 2 drives in it running ZFS RAID1. or possibly BTRFS RAID1.

it isn’t trivial. considering some of them use windows. and the external trays seem to be super unreliable and prone to killing drives.

which is a big part of why I setup the NAS in the first place

3

  1. you mean datasets, not vdevs

  2. I think you’ll find what you need to do is provide a backup service, rather than a file sharing service.

See veeem agent for windows.

  1. then backup that backup.
4

yes. sorry, mixed up the terms. I meant datasets

Yes, that seems to be the case

I looked it up, it seems to be a proprietary program that costs money?

kopiaUI seems to work quite well so far.
Why switch to veeem?

5

I use syncthing to get my family’s stuff to my server, and backup from there. Syncthing watches the file system and will send individual files as they’re updated.

1 Like
6

Thank you. But that creates an identical mirror. which means:

  1. no rolling snapshots
  2. no deduplication

#1 is a major issue. as I have had to recover a file accidentally deleted by a family member before. having the rolling snapshots of kopia lets me do that easily.

In fact, I am not too ashamed to admit I even had to recover something for myself as well. I am not ashamed to admit.

#2 my family keeps massive amounts of copies of their files on the same drive due to… reasons. I tried to explain to them that it is useless and actually makes it worse. But they insist on doing so. In order for their stuff to actually fit into the backup server, I have to use deduplication. which kopia does by default to all files.

Also, I fiddled with syncthing in the past and it is significantly more effort to setup than kopia.

As such, I will stick to kopia for now.