Rsnapshot vs zfs / btrfs snapshots

btrfsrsnapshotzfs

Currently I'm using rsnapshot to implement a daily / weekly / monthly backup scheme on an external disk.
Lately I've been reading alot about copy-on-write file systems like zfs and btrfs. I quite like the ability to store snapshots to go back in time.

Is there any serious drawback of the following approach for creating a history of daily backups?

  • Each day I would synchronize my data with the external drive, formatted with either zfs or btrfs, using rsync.
  • After that I would create a snapshot.
  • Probably implement some thinning of the backup chain.

Best Answer

It is a working scheme, but in order to make yourself even more comfy you could actually store data on zfs. This will give the following advantages:

  • you will be capable of creating snapshots exactly at the place where you need them - this eliminates the need to transport data back during recovery procedure
  • you will be capable of backing up to a second host using incremental snapshots, and this, in its turn, means that a) this is faster b) unlike incremental archive bundles, incremental snapshot will add data to the existing piece, instead of just laying on the disk in one piece and waiting to be extracted in sequence in order to receive full copy c) you will automatically have two sets of snapshots - one on the main host and another on second one
  • you won't need to account the time needed for rsync to sync resources for the snapshot creation to start after rsync finishes, to get a consistent snapshot state (often this can be not that vital, but anyway, one reason less to bother).
Related Topic