Backup server planning

[Deehoo]

Hello

 

After my friend experienced a hard drive failure and lost all his Windows data, I decided I need to get my backups sorted. I have a Windows laptop with 256gb, desktop pc with 5 >3Tb and a Ubuntu server with >300gb data. The server is always on as it hosts Teamspeak and various other projects. I also have a possibility to set up old pc as an offsite backup 200km away but have no real idea what to run on it. I can haul the offsite pc to my home for an initial backup. I am also thinking that the offsite server will be on only when I need it. I am thinking of buing two 4tb drives, one for local backup and one for the offsite.

 

My main question is, what should I do? I am thinking of running FreeNAS locally on VM either on the server or on my pc and then weekly copying it to the offsite server. How well does FreeNAS handle cloning data to other FreeNAS instances and how well does it run on VM? Or should i just copy everything to my Windows desktop and then backup that to the FreeNAS? And how would i actually clone the data to the offsite backup?

[Radium_Angel]

43 minutes ago, dhju8 said:

offsite

I hope you have one Hell of a fast and unlimited internet pipe. 

Personal feeling, run a local NAS, given the amount of data you have locally, much easier and faster to back up. Have the remote systems connect to it for their data backup.

[Windows7ge]

If you have experience with Ubuntu I would just install zfs-utils if you want ZFS. For off-site backup RSYNC over SSH would be less convoluted and more strait forward. This should be pre-installed on Ubuntu.

 

FreeNAS runs fine in a VM though I wouldn't recommend it as its nesting File Systems. Unless you plan to pass-through an HBA it could potentially have problems. I wouldn't depend on it for backup.