Snapshot vs rsync vs replication

TrueNAS General
1

Hello all

Please allow me to ask what most of you consider a very dumb question.

I have been using rsync to backup trunas core servers.
I am backing up nas A to nas B on a weekly basis and to nas C on a monthly basis.

And all was working fine (except for now when an rsync task is run the task status show running. However when the task finishes the task still shows as running. I need to click on the task a popup appears asking if i want to download the log to which i say no, then the task status turn to complete… What is wrong)

Several months ago (due to my stupidity( i had to rebuild my nas servers and at that time i upgraded to truenas scale and all is well

I read that trunas will promote rsync as a backup solution in favour of replications. Fair enough

I started doing my replication today and i am some what confused.

I see on server B that for all the datasets I see that all the file folder and files from server a are there OK

However on server B in the same dataset i see a new folder called zfs and in this folder i see a folder called sharer and a second one called snapshot which contains a folder called snapshot with todays date.

My objective
Is to have a full backup (server B) that i can switch top to play my media (via jellyfin) in the event that server A is not available.

Using rsync this is possible

MY dumb question
If i use replication do i get the same level of details of my media as i did with rsync?

If yes

Wy do i need to have snapshot of my data?

Thank you for you patience and willingness to answer such a basic (dumb) question

2

Not sure what gave you that impression :-/

If anything it’s the opposite.

1 Like
3

@Stux thank you for responding

i read this in one of the threads or one of the videos when i was learning about scale.

Be well

1 Like
4

@Stux

First i liked you using sandbox video interesting and well presented

Sorry to be a pain.

Could you please elaborate on my 2 questions related to replications and snapshots.

If i do replications why do i need snapshots?

I presume that snapshots are only used to rebuild a data storage correct?

Thank you

5

Replications rely on snapshots.

So, you first setup snapshots. Then you can replicate those snapshots.

You don’t need to replicate all snapshots, for example you might just replicate your hourly snapshots.

The trick is you can’t really delete the snapshots from the destination until they are deleted from the source, ergo, you want the source to delete the snapshots on the destination.

Fundamentally, the flow of data is one way though, so A backs up to B which might backup to C…

And B might backup to A as well.

This is in fact how I do it.

C might have an additional layer of snapshots which are kept for a longer term.

I’m working on a video for this, but have been held back by TrueNAS bugs, and other things :slight_smile:

6

Thank you @Stux

this is the lesson i needed

I will then have 2 situations

  1. A full Backup all all my files from A to B on a weekly basis from A to C on a monthly basis

then
2. daily snapshots A to B

This should save my butt when i screw up LOL

Thank you for your help and all the work you are doing for making truenas better

Be well

1 Like
7

Still working on the second part about replications, but here is the first part on Tiered Snapshots, how to set them up, and use them for data recovery