I’m trying to plan a better backup solution for my home server. Right now I’m using Duplicati to back up my 3 external drives, but the backup is staying on-site and on the same kind of media as the original. So, what does your backup setup and workflow look like? Discs at a friend’s house? Cloud backup at a commercial provider? Magnetic tape in an underground bunker?
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“3! 2! 1!” Is just what I say when doing some potentially deleterious action after rsyncing a few key directories to a separate volume
A usb stick and an old hard drive from 2009. The crackhead way of dealing with backups.
I dump my encrypted data to someone who probably practices 3-2-1 rule (which is Backblaze for me). I mean, these guys back up data for a living.
DO NOT follow my lead, my backup solution is scuffed at best.
3:
I have:
- RAID1 array w/ 2 drives
- Photos on the device that took them
- Photos on a random old hard drive pulled from an ancient apple mac.
2:
I’ve got a hard drive and flash memory?
1:
Don’t have this at all, the closest is that my phone is off-site half of the day.
Real selfhosters know
my backup is staring longingly at LTO drives and wishing they would magically be affordable.
I rawdog storage. I RAID0 and forget. huehue.
Toss in another drive for RAID5. That way you can at least have some redundancy…
It’s not important data. Why would I spend another $200+ for another 20TB drive to have redundancy for 1 and 0 I don’t care about…
Fair point.
Currently only have pictures and documents stored, so everything easily fits on 1tb. One copy on my homeserver (unencrypted), one copy on my laptop (Luks encrypted), and one copy with rsync and a raspi at my parents (unencrypted). Might change encryption strategies to all luks.
4-2-1-1 for me I guess 🫣 or 4-2-2?
Two copies at home, synced daily, one of them in an external drive that I like to refer as the emergency grab and run copy lol
One at a family member synced weekly and manually every time I visit.
All of those three copies are always within a 10 kilometer radius in a valley overseen by a volcano so…
One partial copy of the so-critical-would-cry-if-Iost data is synced every few days to a backblaze bucket.
Sometimes: a laughing hyena.
If you don’t have tested backups, you don’t have a backup.
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- Primary ZFS pool with automatic snapshots
- Provides 3+ copies of the files via snapshots (3)
- Secondary ZFS pool at a different location replicates the primary
- Provides more copies of the files (3)
- Provides second media (2)
- Is off-site (1)
Does this make sense?
I don’t think this meets the definition of 3-2-1. Which isn’t a problem if it meets your requirements. Hell, I do something similar for my stuff. I have my primary NAS backed up to a secondary NAS. Both have BTRFS snapshots enabled, but the secondary has a longer retention period for snapshots. (One month vs one week). Then I have my secondary NAS mirrored to a NAS at my friends house for an offsite backup.
This is more of a 4-1-1 format.
But 3-2-1 is supposed to be:
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Three total copies of the data. Snapshots don’t count here, but the live data does.
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On two different types of media. I.e. one backup on HDD and another on optical media or tape.
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With at least one backup stored off site.
Hm I wonder why snapshots wouldn’t satisfy 3. Copies on the same disk like /file, /backup1/file, /backup2/file should satisfy 3. Why wouldn’t snapshots be equivalent if 3 doesn’t guard against filesystem or hardware failure? Just thinking and curious to see opinion.
If I’m reading your example right, I don’t think that would satisfy three either. Three copies of the data on the same filesystem or even the same system doesn’t satisfy the “three backups” rule. Because the only thing you’re really protecting against is maybe user error. I.e. accidental deletion or modification. You’re not protecting against filesystem corruption or system failure.
For a (little bit hyperbolic) example, if you put the system that has your live data on it through a wood chipper, could you use one of the other copies to recover your critical data? If yes, it counts. If no, it doesn’t.
Snapshots have the same issue, because at the root a snapshot is just an additional copy of the data. There’s additional automation, deduplication, and other features baked into the snapshot process but it’s basically just a fancy copy function.
Edit: all of the above is also why the saying “RAID is not a backup” holds true.
Right so I guess the question of 3 is whether it means 3 backups or 3 copies. If we take it literally - 3 copies, then it does protect from user error only. If 3 backups, it protects against hardware failure too.
E: Seagate calls them copies and explicitly says the implementer can choose how the copies are distributed across the 2 media. The woodchipper scenario would be handled by the 2 media requirement.
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- Primary ZFS pool with automatic snapshots
