[geeks] Cheap/reliable backup?

[microcode at zoho.com]

On Mon, Dec 02, 2013 at 05:12:54PM -0500, Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
> Assume the following situation:
> 
> 1. Home or office server with RAID setup, 2TB of 3 TB disk space in use.
> 
> 2. Remote server with 3TB storage.
> 
> Both servers have ZFS installed and working (your choice of OS).
> 
> Would ZFS replication, with snapshots, solve all the aforementioned
> issues?

Only if you only run OS where ZFS actually works and host all your data
there, and only if ZFS has no bugs and your hardware works, otherwise you
also have to manage keeping data that doesn't live on ZFS current on the ZFS
host. Not to mention that all the checksumming in the world doesn't protect
you against software bugs or bad RAM, etc.

Most of my data does live on ZFS unfortunately on consumer hardware but I
also have a nice chunk of data on JFS also on crappy hardware. I would be
satisfied if the backup host ran ZFS on server grade hardware but I wouldn't
depend only or even mostly on snapshots to get the data over there.

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