I currently run an OwnCloud server with about 25 accounts, 2.6 TB, and moderately growing. As data will be stored for the next several decades, the OwnCloud data is on a mirrored ZFS file system, to preserve data integrity. I use rsnapshot to retain nightly, weekly, and monthly snapshots on an 8 TB drive (ext filesystem), which is periodically swapped with another 8 TB drive kept off-site.
The simplicity of attaching the 8 TB drive to any linux box is appealing for file or system recovery. This has been working well for 15 months. Have not yet needed to restore from backup, but 2 failing drive were swapped out on the ZFS.
Is there a significant advantage in using ZFS snapshots and/or using ZFS on the backup drives for improved file integrity? What would be “best practice” or should my current system suffice for now and the future?
Best Answer
ZFS
send/recvis "change-aware": this means that only changed block are transferred on subsequent backups. Compared to something asrsnapshot, which needs to walk all metadata to discover any potentially changed file, and then needs to read all modified files to extract any changes,send/recvclearly is way faster. Rather than reinventing the wheel, I suggest you to give a look atsyncoidto schedule regular, incremental backups.That said,
rsnapshotis a wonderful piece of software which I extensively use whensend/recvis not applicable (ie: when destination runs on something different than ZFS and/or I need to attach it to non-ZFS capable systems).