How does one perform backups on a storage array?

Hardware HDD's & SSD's
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1

How exactly do people large backup their (hard) data.

For example a ZFS array of 8TB x 4 HDD

Do you need a separate machine with the same configuration to backup too?
How does someone connect HDD’s one by one in order to back them up to cold storage. Or is it even possible?

Thanks!

2

You make another array then pull a copy of the source over to the backup

3

yes it’s possible :slight_smile:

… but, … backups to protect from what?

  • accidental deletions, snapshots.
  • hdd failure - raid takes care of that … most of the time.
  • ZFS failure → second machine with a second ZFS array (zfs send receive snapshots as incremental)
  • house burning down → another machine somewhere else on the internet, or some other cloud, or cold storage to send offsite - depends.

some people say “3-2-1” - 3 copies of data in 2 locations 1 offsite ; or 3 copies of data in 2 locations at least 1 on a different kind of medium (e.g. tape vs. hdd), I’m sure there’s other variants.

budget also plays a role, some people backup important data super nicely, … and less important data is not backed up, it may only be snapshotted.

4

If its just home stuff using the old disks when you upgrade to new disks as cold storage is probably the most economical (maybe buy a few to hit redundancy and capacity target)

5

Thanks for the replies.

… to answer the question of “backups to protect from what?”, catastrophic failure.

With all that in mind, would it be advisable to separate, tar, and compress all the data in the pool out to separate cold storage drives?

I’ve seen backup suitcases of HDDs used often. Wondered how these types of backups are done if only one drive is connected at a time.

6

I maintain additional zfs arrays as backup targets and perform zfs send commands for efficient and fast incremental backups.