I currently have two servers both have the exact same hardware, disks, etc.
One server (server1) is going to be the "main" server. It's basically a server with raidz2 that has SMB shares on it that people connect to.
The other server (server2) is configured the same as server1 (raidz2) but is only to be for backing up server1. It's meant to be an offsite backup in the event we lose server1 from disk failure, fire, water damage, etc.
I'm trying to figure out the best way to do the backups to server2.
At first, I was thinking something like rsync. This is trivial to set up in a cron, and I can have it go once a week.
Alternatively, I was thinking of something with zfs send/recv. My understanding is that ZFS can do "snapshots" so I thought it would be great if I can create snapshots/incremental backups without losing a lot of space. I feel like this could be more difficult to implement/prone to errors.
As I said before, both servers are configured the same in terms of hardware and raidz2 layout. What would you all recommend for my current situation?
Best Answer
ZFS is very resilient. The most basic example of shipping a file system would be:
Note the snapshot prior to the send (and sending the snapshot).
You could wrap that up into a script to delete the local snapshot after you've sent it to the remote -- or keep it if you've got the disk space to be able to. Keep previous snapshots on the backup server.
Source and highly recommended reading: https://pthree.org/2012/12/20/zfs-administration-part-xiii-sending-and-receiving-filesystems/