[TriLUG] FreeNAS vs DIY

[Dewey Hylton]

> From: "Igor Partola" <igor at igorpartola.com>
> To: "Triangle Linux Users Group General Discussion" <trilug at trilug.org>
> Sent: Monday, September 16, 2013 11:55:22 AM
> Subject: Re: [TriLUG] FreeNAS vs DIY
> 
> OK, so it sounds like ZFS is pretty much a must. The more research I
> do the
> more I think that I'd be better off with Ubuntu + ZFS for Linux.
> That's
> what I am most familiar with and ZFS seems a lot less scary than
> BTRFS.
> 
> Last question: is it a terrible idea to do backups using rsnapshot
> onto the
> same RAID-Z/zpool as the main data? This way I'd have two subvolumes:
> one
> for the actual online data and one for the daily and weekly
> snapshots. Or
> should I try to figure out some way to set up a second machine with
> ZFS on
> it?
> 
> Thanks,
> Igor

go with a second box for backups ... having said that, though, zfs provides
snapshots so you can create the same-disk snapshots without rsnapshot. just
create a zfs snapshot. this is how i provide hourly/daily/weekly/monthly
snapshots on my backup servers (backed by zfs of course). it's as simple as
this:

zfs snapshot zpoolname/filesystemname at snapshotname

example:  zfs snapshot data/htdocs at 20130916T154119

given the example, your snapshot is available by simply navigating to its
directory: /data/htdocs/.zfs/snapshot/20130916T154119