Check my work on a short & long term backup solution?

Fullmental · December 2, 2019

I don't know if this is necessarily the best place to post this, but I could use a few more sets of eyes on my plan to overhaul my home network.

I am basically a terrible technology nerd trying to reign in my bad backup habits before they come back to bite me, but I'm the kind of person that's just knowledgeable enough with this sort of thing to be dangerous, if you get my drift. I've been putting this off for years (I know, I know), but I do not want to wait any more. The problem is I don't know what the most efficient approach is with the hardware I have, and how to efficiently scale or streamline that into what I *want* down the line.

So I guess the best way to show you what I mean is to start with what I already own:

Spoiler

1 HTPC

1 x 250GB SSD (20% full)

1 x 5TB HDD (Emby. 80% full, still have ~80 Blurays to burn and compress before I'm done digitizing my collection entirely)

1 x 3TB HDD (semi-automatic backup, selectively archives video projects and documents weekly. 100% full)

1 Gaming/Editing PC

1 x 1TB SSD (boot/game disk. 35% full)

1 x 4TB HDD (game & project disk. 66% full)

1 x 500GB SSD (scratch disk. <10% full)

1 x 2TB HDD (Inactive, was my game/project disk before I ran out of space and needed more. Functionally 0% full)

1 Tablet PC

1 x 256GB SSD (75% full)

1 Rack Server

2 x 500GB SSD in RAID 1 (20% full)

I also have a few other, smaller devices such as Pi's, phones, and whatnot which I'd also like to back up. Estimate less than 500GB for all.

So, last week I bought a Synology DS218+ NAS on a Black Friday sale, along with two 12TB Easystores ($15/TB, thank you Best Buy!). This will be the catalyst for all that is to come.

My current backup is...lacking. I maintain a $5/month Backblaze Personal subscription, which I use to back up only my most mission critical data and most sentimental documents, photos, and videos. This amounts to about 800GB of files. The rest of my storage, including my 5TB Emby media drive, doesn't have any backup to speak of. Unless you count the 10 boxes of blurays, cds, and dvds in my closet that are fixing to get sold/donated before the end of the year. Bottom line is I need to do better.

I considered cloud backups, but there are several problems with this ranging from cost to the fact that I will eventually be moving out of my apartment and into a new, smaller home on wheels. Relying on cell phone data to stay connected. I'm not maintaining a 10TB cloud backup this way.

So with that in mind, here's the current plan:

Spoiler

1) The DS218+ will be configured in SHR-1 and *everything* on the HTPC is going to be copied over to the NAS. I have already installed Emby and verified the tiny little J3355 can manage transcoding my worst-case file, so the HTPC will be functionally obsolete.

2) The HTPC will be turned off for good. I'm likely selling the unit without the HDDs not long after

3) The rack server is being permanently retired at the end of 2020. Until then I just need to manage backing that up to the NAS weekly. It's a dev server, so it gets barely any use. I'll replace it functionally with a Pi or NUC.

4) The main rig is being replaced with a high end laptop. At this time the tablet will also be delegated to backup/starbucks duty

5) When the HTPC and gaming rig are fully decommissioned, I want to take buy *new* NAS, likely a DS1019+ 5-bay unit. I will also buy 2 brand new 12TB, migrate everything from the DS218+, and convert the DS1019+ to primary duty.

6) The DS218+ will be then be delegated to *off-site backup* duty. I will drive it to my parents house and hook it up there, where it will sync with my DS1019+. I will change the storage pool on the DS218+ from SHR to a non-RAID combined volume for maximum capacity (24TB), so I can expand into it as I fill out the DS1019+ with more 12TB+ drives

7) I will gradually add more 12TB drives to the 5-bay NAS as needed. I'll switch to SHR-2 when I have 4 drives, matching the capacity of the DS218+ at 24TB total. This should suit my needs for at least the next 5 years, but I'll have an option to add a 5th drive if it becomes necessary.

After that, I will have a complete 3-2-1 backup solution for any important files on my main PC's. 1 copy on the local machines, 1 with redundancy on the DS1019+, and 1 offsite on the DS218+.

The media server will only have two copies of its data at this stage, but as I can afford them I'll buy more external drives for offline backup of those media files. I'll use these for periodic backups (I don't add or update media very often), and store them in a drawer or closet the rest of the time. I wish I could do this all at once, but cost is a major limiting factor right now. I spent pretty much everything I could reasonably afford to spend on the NAS and drives Friday. That said, I think this is about as good as I can do considering what I have now, and what I want in the future?

As far as software goes, I plan to use Synology's built in backup tool for everything I can, and my 5 existing pro licenses of Bvckup2 as well as rsync where I can't. I'm open to other solutions, but it needs to be cheap. No subscriptions, either.

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Am I missing anything important here? Anything make you want to yell at me through the computer screen for? I want to know if there are any flaws in this plan before I fully implement it. Right now I have *copied* all of my data from the HTPC to my NAS, ready to take the HTPC offline permanently, but it'll be relatively simple to start over from scratch on the NAS now if I need to make changes, as opposed to later once I've repurposed those drives

Jonny_IT_IE · December 3, 2019

HI,

That is a good post fair play. One thing I would look at as it has happened me before all be in on a QNAP device is the restore time.

Restoring 10TB could take a while and depending on stripe size, software and other factors you may get at worst 20 mb/s.

Bar that looks good you have the off site and the redundant. There is no one size fits all for DR but you have detailed all your point and answered them well. I think you will be fine.

Would be interesting to see how your "home one wheels" works with mechanical drives :)

Fullmental · December 3, 2019

I would think restore times on any RAID solution would be slow, would it not?

Jarsky · December 3, 2019

It sounds like you've got it all in hand. Personally I like to consolidate devices, so I got rid of my HTPC's except for 1 for the lounge which acts as a Steam Machine. Anything else if it isnt a smart TV, has a small android tv device. Centralised my media server using Plex. I do have a big dev development being an infrastructure engineer, but i switched off all my rack servers and consolidated onto a single storage & vm server (similar to what youre doing with your Synology).

I then have a backup of all my important devices to my storage server, and I do a cloud sync of my most important files (photos, documents, custom scripts, etc...)

I don't backup my Games & Media because well it totals about 100TB and it can always be redownloaded.

On my PC I have a single disk for my Apps & Games, but i've split the volume into 2 partitions. Redirect all my folders (Desktop, Documents, AppData, etc..) to D drive, and my games on G drive. I only run a backup of the OS and D drive as G can always be resynced.