Delta backups vs ZFS snapshots
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Started out with a daily backup job using Deltas and 14 days of retention.
Added ZFS replication between my TrueNAS boxes, which requires snapshots. If I use 14 days worth of snapshots, this gives me up to 28 days of backups.
I'm not saying that this is overkill, but it really does seem rather convoluted when you consider how it all works under the hood.
What is the proper balance here?
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Hi tsettle,
Not sure i follow you, replicating your NAS don't give you more retention you just have your 14 days retention on 2 places?
For the proper balance part it's difficult to say because it mostly depend on your VM criticality, The more critical your VMs are the more you should have backup.
On my personal network for my "main VMs" i have one full backup weekly, and delta every day, the 2 jobs being replicated on 2 storage. I recommend never relying on only one backup job. -
@darkbeldin Guess you didn't follow... if I have 14 days worth of snapshots from XO stored on the NAS and the NAS has 14 days worth of snapshots for the dataset itself, I can then roll the NAS back 14 days, then the previous 14 days worth of XO snapshots are there.
None of that matters though. You say you're replicating as well. I assume you're using rsync or some other mechanism?
I like the idea of daily and weekly backups though. You storing all that in the same place(s) on your NAS or do you create separate datasets for each?
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@tsettle I'm using a cloud to save regularly my full backup, but otherwise i'm only using a Truenas with ZFS.