How offsite is offsite?

[Twisted Trees]

Hi all, 

 

Been watching various LTT YouTube stuff for a while now, but new to here...

 

Just running my thoughts through for a sanity check, There is only myself and my wife using the system, but she is a photographer and graphic designer so loads of files... and I am a YouTube content (small scale, woodturning stuff) so filming PC in the workshop, editing in the house.

 

So I built a NAS, running TrueNas on a Lenovo Thinkserver with a mirrored 14Tb drive Plus an single disk stripe 8Tb I bought another ThinkServer on Ebay for £40 and have set this up with 2 x 16TB drives in a mirror.

 

All data we use and share is on the main server 14TB which has daily snapshots weekly and monthly snapshots giving an approximation of 6 months of snapshots All PC's (4 of them in total)  are backed up weekly to the single 8Tb disk.

 

Plus I have a daily replication to the second server which is installed in the workshop approximately 50m from the house, Should the house burn down the workshop would probably be OK and vice versa if we get hit by a nuke both will go but would we care? 

 

So I would welcome your thoughts, live data is around 6Tb much of which is photographs and my wife LOVES photographs, have I done enough to protect things that have mostly sentimental value or do I need to do more?

 

Not really interested in accessing off site, we resolve that by using remote access software to connect to a PC onsite and running that through a laptop (I also remote into the workshop computer from my nice in the warm house PC when needed) 

 

Anyhow saying hi and floating my system to see if any feedback makes me think! 

 

Pete 

 

 

[Zando_]

51 minutes ago, Twisted Trees said:

Plus I have a daily replication to the second server which is installed in the workshop approximately 50m from the house, Should the house burn down the workshop would probably be OK and vice versa if we get hit by a nuke both will go but would we care? 

Yeah you've basically got it. What's the biggest natural disaster or emergency where your data would be a major concern? Out of range of that is offsite. If you worry about floods for example, mail an HDD to a friend in another state or something (my uncle did similar when he did a lot of video work).

[TempestCatto]

It sounds like you have a pretty good setup already. But to me, offsite means in the event of a natural disaster (flooding, lighting strike, wildfire, etc) that all the data on at least one system is 100% safe.

[Blue4130]

1 hour ago, Twisted Trees said:

Hi all, 

 

Been watching various LTT YouTube stuff for a while now, but new to here...

 

Just running my thoughts through for a sanity check, There is only myself and my wife using the system, but she is a photographer and graphic designer so loads of files... and I am a YouTube content (small scale, woodturning stuff) so filming PC in the workshop, editing in the house.

 

So I built a NAS, running TrueNas on a Lenovo Thinkserver with a mirrored 14Tb drive Plus an single disk stripe 8Tb I bought another ThinkServer on Ebay for £40 and have set this up with 2 x 16TB drives in a mirror.

 

All data we use and share is on the main server 14TB which has daily snapshots weekly and monthly snapshots giving an approximation of 6 months of snapshots All PC's (4 of them in total)  are backed up weekly to the single 8Tb disk.

 

Plus I have a daily replication to the second server which is installed in the workshop approximately 50m from the house, Should the house burn down the workshop would probably be OK and vice versa if we get hit by a nuke both will go but would we care? 

 

So I would welcome your thoughts, live data is around 6Tb much of which is photographs and my wife LOVES photographs, have I done enough to protect things that have mostly sentimental value or do I need to do more?

 

Not really interested in accessing off site, we resolve that by using remote access software to connect to a PC onsite and running that through a laptop (I also remote into the workshop computer from my nice in the warm house PC when needed) 

 

Anyhow saying hi and floating my system to see if any feedback makes me think! 

 

Pete 

 

 

For extra peace o mind, you could add an online aspect of the storage via something like AWS glacier. Should be pretty affordable for the size you need. Or Backblaze. Not really critical, but just an extra layer.

[SorryBella]

1 hour ago, Twisted Trees said:

Plus I have a daily replication to the second server which is installed in the workshop approximately 50m from the house, Should the house burn down the workshop would probably be OK and vice versa if we get hit by a nuke both will go but would we care? 

The minimum bar of off the grid for me is it being on separate breaker from anything high power in your household. But yes that is on the money. Dedicate an online storage spot for your most critical digital data like scanned legal documents and personal records would be a really good idea too, free plan of Dropbox and Drive is enough for those. That would be your most crucial things to back up, and if you wanna splash out either go for Google One 2 TB plan or as @Blue4130 said, Backblaze or AWS Glacier plan if you need something scalable.

[Twisted Trees]

8 hours ago, Zando_ said:

Yeah you've basically got it. What's the biggest natural disaster or emergency where your data would be a major concern? 

We live on top of a hill in a damp climate in the UK so no major weather / earthquake risks plumbing level flood or house fire is the biggest natural disaster risk. biggest risk to data is the pure volume of it, an accidental delete may go unnoticed for a year and I don't know how to handle that.

[Enigma147]

You should be okay.... 

 

Back in 1992 i worked at a company in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.  We had several locations, but our offsite backup location was on the other site of the road, so 50 to 100 meter away. We (IT) did not like that and requested to change our backup location to a production facility 3 kilometer away. Off course it was denied, a scenario where something bad could happen at both locations at once was, according management, crazy.  

 

Two months later, on the fourth of October, An El-Al Jumbo 747 freighter came down in the Bijlmer, after loosing an engine. (bijlmerramp).  Just about 5 kilometer away from our location.  Two days later we got the funding to move our offsite backup location.