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Forum Discussion
Amazon - Snapshots or full data?
Hi All, I recently turned on Amazon Cloud on my RN104 running 6.6.1. So far everything seems to be working corrently, though I aside from a cursory glance at the folder structure on Amazon I have no idea how much data has moved. I expect the total for the selected shares to be over 700GB, but amazon is not showing any size yet. Maybe once the transfer is done it will show?
Anyway, I'm now concerned about Amazon being a two-way sync. Not so much that I would delete something on Amazon, but what if something breaks at amaazon and my files get deleted? or if amazon is hacked and my files get deleted? My understanding that in this siutation the sync would cause my local files on NAS to also get deleted. (please correct me if I'm wrong)
Which brings to my real question. I admittedly do not fully understand snapshots. But am now wondering if instead of replicating the actual data to amazon, should I just be replicating the snapshots instead? Or both?
I would sleep easier if netgear just made an option to set the amazon sync as one-way or two-way my choice.
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Anyone?
If files are deleted from Amazon, they should be deleted from the NAS too
The ideal way to setup would be to snapshot daily the ACD share and then if data deleted, you have a restore point within 24 hours. After some time some automatic snapshots are deleted automatically. See http://kb.netgear.com/24478/ReadyNAS-OS-6-Smart-Snapshot-Management (note if your volume was created on 6.5.0 the threshold is at 90% volume usage not 95%. You can change the threshold using the web admin GUI)
You could also consider doing local backups in addition to backups to Amazon. Getting e.g. a USB disk to backup 700GB of data would be pretty cheap. Or you could get a second NAS.
Local backups have the advantage of faster restore times, Amazon has the advantage that someone else is managing the backup device's hardware and that it's useful for disaster recovery (e.g. if a fire burnt down the building your NAS and local backup are in).
Ultimately what you decide to do depends on your budget and your risk appetite.Best practice is to have multiple backups with at least one of these offsite at all times.
Thank you for your reply. Though I am still fuzzy on snapshots. Such as, is it a real replica of my data? can I restore from it? and how big is it (relative to the size of the source data)?
The size question is important becuase I am currently syncing about 800GB to Amazon. I am still in process of the initial sync, and I project that the entire transfer time will be about about 6 days (around 150 hours), with the speed limitation being what amazon can take in from me, I have plenty of bandwidth to spare and it's currently moving at about 10Mbps. If the snapshot is indeed as large as the source data, then the snapshot will take just as long, and as my data size grows I could arrive at a point that I am perpetually uploading which I do not want to do.
So it all comes down to actually what is a snapshot?
Your points about mutiple backups are all valid. My current backup workflow is that all data reside on a resilient multidisk NAS in RAIDx, and the important shares are sync'd in near real-time to the cloud. I also maintain physical backup drive that I back up to quarterly and store in my neighbors house for additional offsite protection. in a worst case data failure, I would only be missing 3 months of data at most. I should also mention that this data is only family documents, photos and home video.
Hi Redwolf,
I would suggest that you do both.
You could also post on our Idea Exchange for ReadyNAS.
Regards,
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