[GTALUG] Which Distro is Best for Running a ZFS-on-Linux Fileserver.

[Giles Orr]

On Sat, 25 Aug 2018 at 14:21, David Mason via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:

> On Aug 25, 2018, 6:21 AM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk <
> talk at gtalug.org>, wrote:
>
> | From: David Mason via talk <talk at gtalug.org>
>
> | I am interested in this question too. I currently am running on Debian
> | 7.7 but I’m not sure I can upgrade to a more current version, which is
> | frustrating because I want to install Java (to run a Minecraft server)
> | and (when I tried, so while back) I couldn’t get it to install because I
> | had such an old version of Debian.
>
> Back in 2017 March 12 you mentioned a problem "Updating Wheezy to Jessie".
> Did you try Stewart's and Lennart's suggestions?
>
>
> I put a little time into it, but didn’t get to success. Unfortunately,
> life intervened. It’s still important, but as you say, as you fall behind,
> it becomes more difficult to leap-frog into the present.
>
> This is exactly the kind of problem that a debian local users group might
> address. Recently I suggested that GTALUG could function as a debian LUG.
> I guess that here we have a test of this idea.
>
>
> I think it already does. What did you have in mind beyond the mailing list?
>
> Even for the debian upgrade attempt it might be good to have a backup.
>
>
> Yes, I know. :-)
>
> After enough time, the old hardware becomes obsolete too and it makes
> total system rebuild more sensible than update. In my most recent
> example, I jumped about 15 years ahead in hardware.
>
>
> This system is <5 years old, and at the time was kind-of leading edge. so
> I’m not worried about that.
> It’s a 4.4Tb raidz2 at 64% and has performed flawlessly. Unfortunately I
> don’t really have the time to do any serious digging right now, either.
>
> How do others backup their ZFS systems? Getting a 4T external drive
> doesn’t seem like the best plan, but maybe there isn’t any other choice.
>

Actually, that sounds like a really good plan.  In fact, buy two so you can
do rotating backups.  Think about your alternatives - about the only one
that occurs to me is a tape drive.  There used to be consumer-grade tape
backups, but they don't exist anymore and I'd argue this is no longer a
viable solution outside the data centre.

Buying external hard drives is a really good idea: they're dirt cheap (at
least compared to the alternative - failure of your primary).  The first
backup will take a day or so, but after that you use rsync (and/or
rsnapshot or similar) and the backups are likely to run 30 minutes to 2
hours depending on the thrash on your drive.  If you're going to use
something that does differential backups, make sure the backup drive is
larger than the source drive (rather than the default - we all assume "the
same size" is okay).

I use 2.5" spinning external 4TB drives as backups, one of which stays at
my parent's place and gets exchanged approximately weekly.  This may not be
the right answer for you, but you seem to think the data on that big
machine of yours is important: stop and think about how things would be if
it failed.  And then work out a backup system.

-- 
Giles
https://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr at gmail.com
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