Small Business Storage Solution

[MrBucket101]

A family friend asked for my help building/configuring a storage server for his company. He runs an automotive repair shop (paint/body/mechanical) and neither him nor his employees are tech savvy.

The most important thing is data safety. They probably have around 250-300GB of mission critical data, that needs to be stored and backed up. I'm currently leaning towards FreeNAS+ZFS. The simplicity and ease of use seems like a good fit.

 

I have plans on using 2 3TB WD RED in RAIDz1. The goal here is to give them room to grow.

 

What I need help with, is figuring out how to implement some sort of backup system.  I'd like to set it up to run nightly backups, and keep the 14 most recent backups. 

 

I have never used ZFS before. I know ZFS supports snapshots, which are sort of incremental backups of the filesystem. I don't really understand how they are stored/saved though. Do I need to purchase another drive to store snapshots on? Or are they stored on the array? If that is the case, should I get larger drives?

 

I'm also toying around with the idea of a hot-spare. But google hasn't been much help on that front. Does FreeNAS/ZFS have support for hot-spares?

[leadeater]

You'll want a backup solution that keeps the data off of the same system else it's not actually a backup. A pair of external USB disks that you rotate can work well, keep one off site at all times.

 

Something like crashplan should do the job, if they are willing to pay for it you can also backup the system to the cloud.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/crashplan-on-freenas-9-3.26487/

[MrBucket101]

16 minutes ago, leadeater said:

You'll want a backup solution that keeps the data off of the same system else it's not actually a backup. A pair of external USB disks that you rotate can work well, keep one off site at all times.

 

Something like crashplan should do the job, if they are willing to pay for it you can also backup the system to the cloud.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/crashplan-on-freenas-9-3.26487/

I can't believe I have never heard of crashplan before now. That looks like a MUCH better and cheaper solution to backups.

I'm going to look into using that for my home use as well lol

[Mikensan]

Unless you plan to support them when it breaks, I would think of something like synology. You get vendor warranty and support, not to mention if they need to go in and make some sort of change it's a lot less buttons to click / less confusing for them (customer). I believe they have a dock system so you can install a crashplan ... addon if you will ... make life a lot easier. The FreeNAS crashplan jail is a nightmare, easier to just create a new clean jail and install it yourself.

 

Or you could buy the FreeNAS mini which gets you some vendor support and 1 year hardware. It definitely costs more than building it yourself however.

https://www.ixsystems.com/freenas-mini/

 

 

also consider what they might start using it for once it is in place, they may have a need to grow faster than they did before. Maybe they will start storing videos (training?) / customer pictures etc... on there.

 

[MrBucket101]

15 minutes ago, Mikensan said:

Unless you plan to support them when it breaks, I would think of something like synology. You get vendor warranty and support, not to mention if they need to go in and make some sort of change it's a lot less buttons to click / less confusing for them (customer). I believe they have a dock system so you can install a crashplan ... addon if you will ... make life a lot easier. The FreeNAS crashplan jail is a nightmare, easier to just create a new clean jail and install it yourself.

 

Or you could buy the FreeNAS mini which gets you some vendor support and 1 year hardware. It definitely costs more than building it yourself however.

https://www.ixsystems.com/freenas-mini/

 

 

also consider what they might start using it for once it is in place, they may have a need to grow faster than they did before. Maybe they will start storing videos (training?) / customer pictures etc... on there.

 

I'm actually in talks with him to negotiate an hourly rate with which I can invoice him for. So I'll be responsible for things going forwards, primarily hands-off though, as this is just a side-job. 

 

I'll give FreeNAS+Crashplan a fair shot before abandoning it. My personal server is running headless ubuntu server, and I'm intimately familiar with the inner workings of the OS in general. If I can't get FreeNAS to work, then I'll switch to ubuntu and install webmin+crashplan+ZFS.

 

As far as hardware goes, I've already purchased the hardware. I purchased this listing off eBay. I got 24GB of ECC memory instead, and dropped the 500gb hard drive. My third time purchasing from Mr. Rackables, so I don't have any doubts about the hardware. It may be a few years old, but for the price, you can't beat it. I priced out a similar build, using new parts and was already into the $700 range...without hard drives.

 

 

[samiscool51]

been their, done that

 

get x4 2TB HDDS

but them into RAID 1

job done

simple and effective for a long time

 

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, samiscool51 said:

been their, done that

 

get x4 2TB HDDS

but them into RAID 1

job done

simple and effective for a long time

 

This doesn't address backups though, you can't solely trust RAID to protect your data. It also doesn't protect you from data loss due to user error etc.

 

RAID is redundancy not backup, it's in the name. Redundant Array of Independent Disks.

[Mikensan]

16 hours ago, MrBucket101 said:

I'm actually in talks with him to negotiate an hourly rate with which I can invoice him for. So I'll be responsible for things going forwards, primarily hands-off though, as this is just a side-job. 

 

I'll give FreeNAS+Crashplan a fair shot before abandoning it. My personal server is running headless ubuntu server, and I'm intimately familiar with the inner workings of the OS in general. If I can't get FreeNAS to work, then I'll switch to ubuntu and install webmin+crashplan+ZFS.

 

As far as hardware goes, I've already purchased the hardware. I purchased this listing off eBay. I got 24GB of ECC memory instead, and dropped the 500gb hard drive. My third time purchasing from Mr. Rackables, so I don't have any doubts about the hardware. It may be a few years old, but for the price, you can't beat it. I priced out a similar build, using new parts and was already into the $700 range...without hard drives.

 

 

Solid machine for the job. You'll love freenas I'm willing to bet. You can also create a CIFS/samba share and then on a client computer map a drive and install crashplan. Bsd isn't too far off from Linux so much that you will feel lost, only time you'd touch CLI is when you play with jails. You could create a jail with a ssh daemon so you can dial in and then access the web interface to remotely manage it. 

 

I have a lot of heartache setting up crashplan in FreeBSD, guides are for a version or two behind which changed how crashplan connects to a local crashplan host. No experience is setting it up for for their online service. Crashplan isn't designed to run headless so it requires some tinkering. If you get it working drop me a line.

 

 

otherwise you can go Linux plus btrfs and go crazy. It is a good alternative to zfs but still in a growth phase. Unraid is the only distro I know of that ships with btrfs if you wanted turnkey.

[MrBucket101]

16 hours ago, leadeater said:

This doesn't address backups though, you can't solely trust RAID to protect your data. It also doesn't protect you from data loss due to user error etc.

 

RAID is redundancy not backup, it's in the name. Redundant Array of Independent Disks.

 

1 hour ago, Mikensan said:

Solid machine for the job. You'll love freenas I'm willing to bet. You can also create a CIFS/samba share and then on a client computer map a drive and install crashplan. Bsd isn't too far off from Linux so much that you will feel lost, only time you'd touch CLI is when you play with jails. You could create a jail with a ssh daemon so you can dial in and then access the web interface to remotely manage it. 

 

I have a lot of heartache setting up crashplan in FreeBSD, guides are for a version or two behind which changed how crashplan connects to a local crashplan host. No experience is setting it up for for their online service. Crashplan isn't designed to run headless so it requires some tinkering. If you get it working drop me a line.

 

 

otherwise you can go Linux plus btrfs and go crazy. It is a good alternative to zfs but still in a growth phase. Unraid is the only distro I know of that ships with btrfs if you wanted turnkey.

Just talked to my friend, he said he didn't feel comfortable storing his mission critical data in the cloud. 

As it stands right now, I'm probably looking to backup the data monthly to an external hard drive that I'll take off-site. Not the most elegant solution, but I think it will work, and it will also force me to go on-site to check in. So maybe a win-win?

 

Did some quick reading and it looks like I'll need to format the external as a ZFS drive, and then "send" the data over? Have either of you done something like this? Is there a better solution without cloud backups?

[Mikensan]

18 minutes ago, MrBucket101 said:

 

Just talked to my friend, he said he didn't feel comfortable storing his mission critical data in the cloud. 

As it stands right now, I'm probably looking to backup the data monthly to an external hard drive that I'll take off-site. Not the most elegant solution, but I think it will work, and it will also force me to go on-site to check in. So maybe a win-win?

 

Did some quick reading and it looks like I'll need to format the external as a ZFS drive, and then "send" the data over? Have either of you done something like this? Is there a better solution without cloud backups?

If you want to connect it directly and create a sync job, then yes it needs to be zfs. I've never connected a USB disk to freenas, but assuming it is like connecting a sata drive then the wizard can do it for you. You could create a jerry-rig solution where you create a custom cron job to ssh to your box at your house and rsync the data. Then you can use whatever file system you want. 

 

Or create a jail and throw in Linux bash (tutorials are out there) and do whatever you feel comfortable with.

 

Or like mentioned earlier, map a network drive to the NAS from a Windows machine and use a Windows application to sync files remotely. (Ssh + xcopy)

 

you are bottlenecked by the upload of the shop so even if the setup seems nested / slow it won't impact it too much. 

 

I would definitely make the initial copy while on site and just do a differential daily/weekly.

 

 

my current solution isn't the best but I created a second pool with a raidz2 vdev, and use the sync feature. It does delta copies which is pretty fast so I have almost a near live backup going. (10 minutes during my active hours, hourly otherwise). I do not retain data on the backup array (I.E. I cannot get data from last week). Instead I use the snapshot feature on the main array to pull that data. My backup is only the most recent data.

[dalekphalm]

41 minutes ago, MrBucket101 said:

 

Just talked to my friend, he said he didn't feel comfortable storing his mission critical data in the cloud. 

As it stands right now, I'm probably looking to backup the data monthly to an external hard drive that I'll take off-site. Not the most elegant solution, but I think it will work, and it will also force me to go on-site to check in. So maybe a win-win?

 

Did some quick reading and it looks like I'll need to format the external as a ZFS drive, and then "send" the data over? Have either of you done something like this? Is there a better solution without cloud backups?

What kind of Internet Plan do they have?

 

I would suggest a 3-2-1 Backup Plan

 

3 copies of Data, 2 copies stored locally on different devices, 1 copy offsite

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/

 

Option 1 - Ideal

I would suggest:

1. Your main storage server/NAS - FreeNAS is fine, so is Ubuntu or any other "file server" OS. With the amount of data they currently have (300GB or so), I'd recommend over provisioning a lot, to give them room to grow. Your plan of using 2x 3TB WD Red's is a good plan. However, you can't use RAIDZ1 - RAIDZ1 is the ZFS equivalent of RAID5. You want to use "Mirrored disks" - the "RAID1 equivalent". But I have no doubt you'll figure out those details.

 

2. Buy a couple of 2-bay NAS's that support offsite replication - Store one in the Garage beside the Storage Server. Store the other one at your office (If you're maintaining their systems), or at the bosses home. Have the NAS's synchronize every night. You can configure the schedule to sync as often or as little as you want. The sync is incremental, so it'll only sync the new data. Eg: We have our backup NAS's sync every couple hours, every day, so the individual transactions are pretty small.

 

Option 2 - Cheaper!

1. Same as above

 

2. Buy a single NAS for backup, a 2-bay deal is fine.

 

3. Setup your backup software to make an extra backup to a Hot-swap disk installed into the main Storage Server - physically take this out and take it off site (Eg: Bosses home, your home, a safety deposit box, etc. Have TWO HDD's setup for hot-swap, with an identical Volume Name. Rotate the off-site backups (Eg: While Backup Disk #1 is at bosses house, Backup Disk #2 is plugged into the server waiting for a backup).

 

I'd also recommend more frequent offsite swaps then once a month. This is business financial data after all. I'd suggest swapping the off-site disks at least once a week. With training, they can handle this themselves, as you can automate the process once the disk is installed.

 

I'd recommend option #1 for sure though - it's much more hands off for the end user. Less to screw up. Better protection.

[MrBucket101]

22 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

What kind of Internet Plan do they have?

 

 

Option 2 - Cheaper!

1. Same as above

 

2. Buy a single NAS for backup, a 2-bay deal is fine.

 

3. Setup your backup software to make an extra backup to a Hot-swap disk installed into the main Storage Server - physically take this out and take it off site (Eg: Bosses home, your home, a safety deposit box, etc. Have TWO HDD's setup for hot-swap, with an identical Volume Name. Rotate the off-site backups (Eg: While Backup Disk #1 is at bosses house, Backup Disk #2 is plugged into the server waiting for a backup).

 

I'd also recommend more frequent offsite swaps then once a month. This is business financial data after all. I'd suggest swapping the off-site disks at least once a week. With training, they can handle this themselves, as you can automate the process once the disk is installed.

 

I'd recommend option #1 for sure though - it's much more hands off for the end user. Less to screw up. Better protection.

Their internet is pretty bad. 10/1 business class. 

 

I'm going to go this route. I found this on newegg

 

All that left is to figure out a way to automate the backups in FreeNAS, which @Mikensan went over above.

 

I think I've got everything covered now!