TrueCloud Backup Questions and Suggestions

I was trying out the new TrueCloud Backup feature after installing the ElectricEel RC and noticed that the most granular it gets is the ability to restore a folder. However, I have some folders with multiple TB of data where I might only need to restore like 10-50GB worth. That could be a lot of extra time, bandwidth, and money to Storj. I use ZFS snapshots where I can grab individual files, so hopefully would only be restoring from TrueCloud in the case of a Pool failure, but still, this would be nice to have.

Am I missing something? Will this be added later? Why not include this extra level of restore capability?

Also, for cloud sync tasks there are multiple paces to perform dry runs, but this is not present in TrueCloud Backup. I don’t know about anyone else, but I often mess up the syntax for things like exclusions and being able to do a dry run helps me avoid consuming a ton of bandwidth unintentionally and correct the backup job before it fully runs to the storage provider. Is there any intention to add this later to the TrueCloud Backup section?

RC is looking great so far overall though!

EDIT It seems like I can restore a specific file from this screen if I type in the file name I want:
image

However, the GUI does not load the list of files that I have backed up for selection.

Also, there doesn’t seem to be an option for a dashboard item for TrueCloud. It would be nice if this was added since it exists for c Cloud Sync Tasks. When I configure a TrueCloud Backup task and enable it on a schedule, it doesn’t show up in this card:
image

Thanks for the feedback.

TrueNAS doesn’t normally work at file level… but your observations seem correct.

The addition of a dashboard widget would be a feature request. Use that category… even if we are doing it, it will be a reminder.

1 Like

@Captain_Morgan I will submit a feature request for the dashboard. Regarding TrueNAS not normally working at a file level, doesn’t it depend on what specifically we are talking about? I know ZFS snapshots are block level, but obviously files are stored in ZFS. In the case of TrueCloud, isn’t it functioning as a file level backup? My ability to restore a single file with it as long as I specify the file name would seem to prove as much.

If it’s a design decision not to allowing browsing a backup to restore individual files, or if it’s an engineering challenge, I could understand that. I just would appreciate a bit of insight as to what’s going on there.

Most actions in the NAS are dataset level.
For security reasons, we don’t encourage storage admins to view individual files.
In the extreme case, a file may be the HR file of a storage admin.

There may be tools we can provide for file level access, but its not the focus of the 1st version of this specific feature.

1 Like