Unraid backup with Crashplan


madams2246

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QQ, so I have the Crashplan docker running at this point to back up my "data" folder.  It crossed my mind that I should ask what else should I backup and is it usable assuming a major hardware failure and rebuild?  Currently I am just using unRAID for data storage along with Plex and Crashplan dockers.

 

Thanks in advance for any input on this topic.

 

Mike

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QQ, so I have the Crashplan docker running at this point to back up my "data" folder.  It crossed my mind that I should ask what else should I backup and is it usable assuming a major hardware failure and rebuild?  Currently I am just using unRAID for data storage along with Plex and Crashplan dockers.

 

Thanks in advance for any input on this topic.

 

Mike

 

I think the question of WHAT to backup comes down to you and how important that data is to you. It's a bit of a cost analysis BUT I would say in general people tend to say things like the following are ESSENTIAL:

 

- Photo's

- Important Documentation

- etc

 

Then people say things like "I can live with loosing my movies and video's". While I am sure this is true I think people forget just how much time it takes to:

 

- Rip your Blu-Rays / DVD's, imagine re ripping 100's again?

- What if you have a FIRE and both your Backup and Source get destroyed then you have to replace them?

- etc

 

I am sure you get the picture. My view is, that if it is worth me storing it an keeping it, it is worth saving. So I duplicate my data (At the share level - so it is not disk dependant) on a dedicated SFF Backup Server which is easily movable. To guard against an event where moving the Backup Server is impossible (like a bush fire when I'm not home) I have each drives in my Backup Server duplicated Weekly and stored off site**

 

** which is why I keep as large disks as possible in my Backup Server to reduce the physical footprint of disks I have to keep off site.

 

If your secondary objective is the restoration of unRAID, I Backup my App Folder (Where Docker Settings, VM's etc live) and I also backup my entire Flash Drive. I do this Daily.

 

I considered CrashPlan briefly, but decided to go with a local storage backup. CrashPlan was PAINFULLY slow so it wasn't feasible for me to use. Maybe you're backing up much less than I tried to in terms of volume.

 

AFAIK you CAN use Crash-plan to manage Backups to a local source not just the cloud.

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Crash plan has problems with scaling. Backup 500 gb to the cloud no problems. But try to have your backup between 5 and 50tb and crash plan will kill your server. It's very resource intensive for larger backups.

 

Is that issue for backups that are local, remote or both?

 

Do you have a reference for further information on the issue?

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CrashPlan does use data deduplication so every block of data that you backup is compared with all data blocks previously backed up and that takes time and resources and you will typically see that it is getting slower the more data you have.

 

I currently have 7.5 TB in their cloud and the backup speed ranges from 5 Mbit up to 80 Mbit. The difference is speed is probably depending on the resource usage at the individual server you are connected to rather than bandwidth limitations, at least that’s my guess.

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They say 1 GB per 1 TB of data but it’s a mix of number of files and size. I would say that this estimate is high just to be on the safe side.

 

I am running in an Ubuntu VM and I believe I have allocated 4 GB for the VM and have never seen any problems.

CrashPlan is by default using 1 GB max and it will not allocate anything more unless you reconfigure it to do so (I belive I have set it to 3 GB or 3.5 GB)

 

What you would see is that you backup never gets ready. When it periodically scans your files to verify your backup it will never get ready and will just restart.

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From personal experience...

 

I've been using Crashplan for over a year now, backing up my entire server to their online service. I've currently got just over 10TB uploaded and haven't had any problems. It regularly uploads at the limit of my broadband connection (15Mb) and restricted to 6GB of RAM, which hasn't caused any problems.

 

Back to the original question:

 

I backup all the stored data on the server; movies, TV shows, the lot. As Danioj said, if it's worth storing, it's worth keeping. I also backup the AppData folder (real-time), my flash drive (after every change) and my VMs (Weekly).

 

SR

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Personally I do nightly backups of my main server to a backup server using an rsync script. I prefer to do all local backups as normal file backups. It´s easier to restore files than it is from a CrashPlan backup archive file.

 

In addition I do weekly manual backups of VMs with Midnight Commander as well as an rsync script that I run manually to backup the appdata share. Flash drive is copied manually when needed.

 

Everything is stored at the CrashPlan cloud but I prefer to see this as a “disaster recovery option” if restoring from my local backups fails.

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Personally I do nightly backups of my main server to a backup server using an rsync script. I prefer to do all local backups as normal file backups. It´s easier to restore files than it is from a CrashPlan backup archive file.

 

In addition I do weekly manual backups of VMs with Midnight Commander as well as an rsync script that I run manually to backup the appdata share. Flash drive is copied manually when needed.

 

Everything is stored at the CrashPlan cloud but I prefer to see this as a “disaster recovery option” if restoring from my local backups fails.

Same thing here. Ipmi wake the backup server, rsync the entire thing (30tb) in about an hour over gb Ethernet. It's nice to have things all arranged on the backup server the same way as on the main server.

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  • 10 months later...

I use SyncBack to backup my desktop PC to an unRAID share on my Main system.

 

I use rsync to backup my Main system to my Backup system. I backup user shares and have split levels setup on my backup system.

 

I did a post long time ago in this thread about my rsync setup. I believe I have made some minor changes since then but you should at least get some hints on how to use rsync.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=38554.msg358683#msg358683

Pls remember that rsync is very powerful and not very forgiving so use the option “--dry-run” to test the script first. Search the web for some guides before you start using rsync.

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I use rsync to backup my Main system to my Backup system. I backup user shares and have split levels setup on my backup system.

 

I did a post long time ago in this thread about my rsync setup. I believe I have made some minor changes since then but you should at least get some hints on how to use rsync.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=38554.msg358683#msg358683

I use a similar script to backup my Main to my Backup. The problem I had with the initial backup is rsync would create the destination folders before it began copying any of the files. Since I had one share that was larger than a single drive, and split level that prevented some folders from being split, this had the effect of creating all destination folders on one drive (plenty of space for empty folders), and then all the files had to go into those folders and couldn't be split to another drive. So they wouldn't fit.

 

I had to babysit it during that initial backup and move some of the empty folders to another drive before it began copying files to them. Now that it is just incremental there is no problem.

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  • 2 weeks later...

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