I have two old ReadyNAS 1100 units, the main one has a variety of user home shares and webdav shares. I would like to back these all up to the second 1100 but have them end up in effectively the same places so that the second 1100 could then if needed be quickly and easily made in to the live main one.
In other words I am talking about keeping the two in sync. ReadyNAS Replicate sounds like it would be perfect for the job but these old models did not include it as standard and I cannot justify buying two licenses for it. On the face of it setting up an Rsync of the entire drive C on the source ReadyNAS to the same drive C location on the backup ReadyNAS would do the job as drive C contains everything from all shares. Unfortunately I cannot see anyway to backup to drive C. (There is an option to backup from drive C.)
Is there a way to do this without having to setup individual backups for each share?
Backing up drive C to a location say in the backup share would backup everything but would not put the backed up files in the matching locations meaning the backup unit could not then be quickly turned in to the live one if needed. The same would apply if backing up to a USB drive on the second 1100.
How many shares do you have. A share to share raync backup is more versatile. You only have to set it up once.
There is the home share for each user, plus a webdav share per user, and one more webdav share 'shared' by all of them. At the moment there are eight users but this number will continue to increase. This means at the moment I would have to setup seventeen RSync backups and keep adding more over time. This is obviously possible to do but I am hoping there is a cleverer way to do this.
It is possible to specify drive C as the source but as far as I can see one cannot specify it as the destination - unless there is an addin or way to configure this via ssh.
I can setup a rsync job like this (volume c source and just leave the destination path blank. The test connection works. I can't test the job as the destination is not a test unit, perhaps you could?
I can setup a rsync job like this (volume c source and just leave the destination path blank. The test connection works. I can't test the job as the destination is not a test unit, perhaps you could?
When testing the connection you can leave the destination path blank, but it will not let you 'save' this new backup unless you do put something in the path field, that is the Apple button remains disabled until you put something in.
As far as I can see because the drive C is not a standard share you cannot use that as a destination. Furthermore the designation share needs to have been also enabled for use with Rsync.
So far the only options I see myself are to either splash out on two ReadyNAS Replicate licenses, or possibly to use a computer to backup from the source to the destination. A computer can access the entire drive C on the destination via SMB. Hmmm.
The thought of using SMB did lead me to look at another possibility. You can select as the source Volume C, you can select as the destination a remote Windows/NAS i.e. an SMB server, you can then specify C as the destination path and this passes the test. However I have just tried running it and it looks like it fails to work even though the test passed. If I look at the log it saying things like the following -
`./lost+found/#90013697' -> `/job_001/./lost+found/#90013697' cp: cannot create directory `/job_001/./backup/Network Trash Folder': No such file or directory cp: cannot create directory `/job_001/./backup/Temporary Items': No such file or directory cp: cannot create directory `/job_001/./backup/.AppleDesktop': No such file or directory cp: cannot create directory `/job_001/./backup/.AppleDouble': No such file or directory cp: cannot create directory `/job_001/./backup/.AppleDB': No such file or directory
Apart from the fact it appears to be failing to create folders on the destination, it also looks like it would be putting things in a sub-folder called 'job_001' rather than leaving things at the top of drive C. This means things would not end up in the right places for quickly turning the backup ReadyNAS in to the live one.
Woah! Just looked at a new bunch of log entries and locked at a mounted view of the backup drive C, files are appearing in the right places. Looks promising, I will have to leave it running longer to see.
Still looking good, it looks like I have a solution.
As per my last message this is to set the source on the source ReadyNAS to be drive C, and the destination to be the SMB share of drive C on the destination ReadyNAS.
One extra caveat I have discovered is that one must define this job on the source ReadyNAS, it does not seem possible to do this from the destination ReadyNAS.
