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Documentation for Replicate, specifically backup and restoring data
Hello, I've been using Replicate for about 3 years now and luckily (knock on wood), I'v never had to restore my backup NAS to my primary NAS. That being said, I can't find any documentation on ho...
Thanks againg for your input, StephenB and TeknoJnky.
I got everything backed up this last week and so far as good.
StephenB, I know when I called into Netgear originally to setup Replicate, they suggested NOT to use snapshots on the destination (backupnas) device. Should I also not be creating snapshots on the destination device, when using Rsync?
By the way, I'm going with the "pull" method as I like the idea of putting the NAS on a power schedule. That being said, do I just figure how long the backup jobs should take, schedule them within the hours that the NAS is powered on, and that is it? Will it power off automatically if schedule backups are pending or in the middle of finishing one?
Here is a picture of my current schedule, which by the way, can you just have them all run at the same time and it will run each one, one-by-one until completion?
Thanks again for your suggestions!
Well you are correct, in that replicate is not a 'mirroring' solution. And its not designed so that the backup device can simply stand in for the original source device.
If I remember correctly, the backup destination is divided into snapshots, depending on how you have the backup job configured.
I think you can set the backup job to not use any snapshots, and it should perform more closely to how a traditional rsync.
Otherwise, again if I remember correctly, during a replicate job, the source is snapshotted, the destination is snapshotted, and the difference is rsynced into a new destination subfolder.
If you did not already know, that replicate was designed back on raidator 4.x, so we did not the btrfs snapshot capabilities we have now.
I am not sure if replicate is orphaned internally or not, but I know it hasn't been migrated to the mynetgear account system.
If it had some more development time, it could probably be updated and streamlined and made a little more user friendly.
Thanks againg for your input, StephenB and TeknoJnky.
I got everything backed up this last week and so far as good.
StephenB, I know when I called into Netgear originally to setup Replicate, they suggested NOT to use snapshots on the destination (backupnas) device. Should I also not be creating snapshots on the destination device, when using Rsync?
By the way, I'm going with the "pull" method as I like the idea of putting the NAS on a power schedule. That being said, do I just figure how long the backup jobs should take, schedule them within the hours that the NAS is powered on, and that is it? Will it power off automatically if schedule backups are pending or in the middle of finishing one?
Here is a picture of my current schedule, which by the way, can you just have them all run at the same time and it will run each one, one-by-one until completion?
Thanks again for your suggestions!
nickjames wrote:
StephenB, I know when I called into Netgear originally to setup Replicate, they suggested NOT to use snapshots on the destination (backupnas) device. Should I also not be creating snapshots on the destination device, when using Rsync?
Snapshots work well on the destination shares for rsync backups, and I've used them for some years with mine. I do use custom snapshots (not the default "smart snapshots"). I check the "only take snapshots with changes" box. Keep on eye on the total space used for snapshots, and adjust the retention to keep it reasonable. 3 months works for me generally. I have one share that holds PC image backups (very large fies), and I've set retention there to 2 weeks.
Awesome, thanks for your input. I'll setup snapshots as well then as we have the free space.
Any thoughts on the other part of my question?
By the way, I'm going with the "pull" method as I like the idea of putting the NAS on a power schedule. That being said, do I just figure how long the backup jobs should take, schedule them within the hours that the NAS is powered on, and that is it? Will it power off automatically if schedule backups are pending or in the middle of finishing one?
Here is a picture of my current schedule, which by the way, can you just have them all run at the same time and it will run each one, one-by-one until completion?
nickjames wrote:
That being said, do I just figure how long the backup jobs should take, schedule them within the hours that the NAS is powered on, and that is it? Will it power off automatically if schedule backups are pending or in the middle of finishing one?
Here is a picture of my current schedule, which by the way, can you just have them all run at the same time and it will run each one, one-by-one until completion?
The NAS will delay its power down until the backups are complete. So if you start the backups at 12:05 am you can turn the power down at 01:00. .It will also do this for some maintenance functions (scrub for sure). I power up the NAS at 11:00, just to make sure I don't miss snapshot creation/deletion and other such tasks
You can schedule all the backups to start at the same time, the backup job manager will queue them.
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