[kwlug-disc] btrfs/zfs for backups

[Joe Wennechuk]

I have used cygwin in the past to back up windows machines to linux servers with rsync. It worked very well for me.

> Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2014 20:44:34 -0500
> From: paul_nijjar at yahoo.ca
> To: kwlug-disc at kwlug.org
> Subjct: [kwlug-disc] btrfs/zfs for backups
> 
> I am officially unhappy with Microsoft DFS replication. Earlier this
> year I set up a couple of Windows Server 2008 R2 boxes to synchronize
> big backup files over a wireless link, and it does not work well at
> all. So now I am re-evaluating, and once again thinking of using some
> Free Software filesystems for my job. 
> 
> I was thinking of scrapping the DFS replication and trying to use
> rsync on Windows instead, but as far as I can tell all binaries of
> rsync on 64-bit Windows are terrible. 
> 
> My inclination is to go with Debian/Ubuntu fileservers that
> synchronize backup files (one way). Once upon a time somebody (I think
> it was Chris Irwin) got me all excited by talking about btrfs send and
> receive, that would allow you to send snapshots of incremental changes
> to remote hosts via SSH. That sounds exciting, but The Internet (or at
> least this StackExchange post:
> http://serverfault.com/questions/285878/is-btrfs-production-ready ) it
> seems that I should not consider this, and should go with ZFS instead
> (which also has this functionality).
> 
> So here are my options: 
> - Try btrfs on Debian/Ubuntu and hope it is mature enough to work for
>   my use case
> - Try ZFS on Linux the way Lori does
> - Try ZFS on FreeBSD or some other OS where it is native
> - Find some way to get large, effective filesync working on the
>   Windows servers I have already built (ideally with FLOSS)
> 
> Here is some information about the infrastructure: 
> - The fileserver will consist of a bunch of Samba shares 
> - Symantec BackupExec (yes, I know) will write big backup files to
>   these shares. Most of the files are 4GB large, but there are a few
>   files that are almost 100GB large.
> - The two servers are connected via a wireless link that effectively
>   runs at 100Mbit
> - The backup storage media are Western digital Green drives (sorry
>   Cedric)
> - The servers themselves are nothing special: 64-bit intel
>   workstations with 2-4GB of RAM. 
> - These are backup files, so data integrity is important
> - We can assume there are 100s of GB of data backed up each week,
>   although I am not sure whether this means hundreds of files are
>   changing each week. (This could be the case; BackupExec has a habit
>   of doing things in the most inconvenient way possible.) 
> 
> I am interested in hearing about how well btrfs works for the btrfs
> send/receive scenario I am thinking about, and any advice
> strengthening/contradicting the StackExchange opinion. If people are
> using ZFS (in particular ZFS on Linux) with zfs send/receive in this
> manner then I am interested in that information as well. If people
> have other options (such as an effective rsync option for Windows 64
> bit) then feel free to chime in. I am more interested in experiences
> than speculation. 
> 
> - Paul 
> 
> -- 
> http://pnijjar.freeshell.org
> 
> 
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