Backup

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TheNamelessPoet

Member
If this is in the wrong spot, by all means move it :)

So, I have usually backed up my photo's and documents locally on a second hard drive. I used FreeNAS for a while, but when the "OS" HD died I couldn't access anything and it made me a bit nervous. I do not want to use an offsite storage company like the cloud for my personal stuff, I prefer to setup my own local cloud storage. I am concerned about backing up however.

What would be the best program to use to backup my important stuff, and how do I make it redundant. My goal is a very small server rack at some point so that I can have my security camera's hook into some kind of DVR type system, and have it accessible internally.

I also want to learn about virtual machines (because why not) and have a centralized hub for my entire house. I have lots of LED stuff that goes with xLights and I just overall want to tidy things up. I already have wired my house with CAT 6 cables so I might as well use it.

Lastly (and this may need to go into networking after this) I want to set up a VPN for myself to get into my home network instead of using Google Remote Viewer or something like it.

Anyway, is RAID the way to go, and if so, what is the best way to go about it? I will have lots of follow-up questions I am sure lol I went to school 20 years ago for networking and PC building itself and have a basic understanding how things work/connect but a LOT has changed and it has been a LOOOONG time so I don't even really know where to start. I would like to do this 1x and not have to tear it down again in 12 months (or less) and start over.

A slight look into my home setup is,

2 laptops,
2 Phones,
2 PC's connected directly via ethernet to a switch in my closet that is connected to my router.
1 Printer connected via ethernet
ATM 4 wireless pixel controllers I can control from my PC's (soon to be probably 3+ more by the end of the year)
 
beers

beers

Moderator
Staff member
Maybe a x86 based NAS? You can run VMs and stuff on it, and leverage whatever RAID array you want for individual hard drive redundancy. There's a few different levels depending on the redundancy level you want (1 mirrors drives, 5 is single parity for a single drive failure, 6 is dual parity for two drive failures, 10 loses half the capacity with 4 drives but can have one member out of each group fail, etc). In traditional levels you lose x amount of drive space in your array for however many drives you want to have fault tolerance over, but you also lose things like write performance in parity situations since the device has to calculate out the parity and write chunks of it across all disks.

It's common to pair a NAS with some sort of cloud backup storage so you have extra data redundancy, which can be automated to run at night or something for specific folders, should you so desire.
 
Darren

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
Given what else you're wanting to do sounds like you need a full blown server or beefier NAS, as Beers said.

For actual data redundancy you need something offsite, be it cloud or another physical server you control and replicate to.

Okedokey said:
RAID is not a backup. Look into 3-2-1 principle and I would suggest something like BackBlaze https://www.backblaze.com/
Click to expand...
No it's not, and nobody here said it was.
 
T

TheNamelessPoet

Member
Thanks guys. Sorry, this is the 1st chance I have gotten to get back to this lol. That kind of week.


TY @Okedokey, I had NOT realized it was different. What is RAID considered then, just data redundancy? Isn't that what a backup is? Not arguing, I guess I just did not totally understand what RAID was, or maybe I am using it improperly.

@Darren I am going to build my own server, mostly for data backup, that all our computers/Phones can access it from inside our home network. I will eventually be back to figure out how to make it unable to have access to the world (without a personal VPN).

@beers I am not quote sure what you mean an x86 based NAS?

I suppose explaining what I am thinking for a setup will most likely cause less confusion lol.

I currently have the internet coming into the home into the ISP’s router. Connected to the router I have:

The Printer - because it is physically next to it,

Switch - I then have the 3 bedrooms and the living room all connected to the 1 switch.

Phones - all connect to the WIFI along with the LED controllers (ESPixelstick’s and soon to be a DigQUAD) for all my LED stuff outside.)

Amazon Stick – 2 of them also connect via WIFI
Laptops – 2 currently, wife has a kindle also.

One of the PC’s is in a bedroom, which has a PLEX server on it. All the PC’s in the house have a wired connection and the Laptops are WIFI.

I DO have a 2nd router that I use as an access point in the living room, due to the signal not being strong enough to make it from 1 side of the house to the other. The other PC is actually connected to that.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What I am looking to do.

I can’t decide if making a small rack server is the best option, but I DO thin kit would be fun. I would think it is much easier to be expanded in the future. I do want to eventually when Raspberry Pi’s become more available, have one on the network to use for PFSense or something like it.

I also currently have the Blink camera’s which I want to get rid of and have a home setup, that as long as I get a PoE switch, I should be able to set up regular camera’s and have them record direct to a HD in the rack server. Essentially, I would like to get rid of the 2nd PC (or at least not use that as a server) and just turn it on when needed.

I also want to learn more about Virtual Machines as well, so I am going to need a better “computer” to use as a backbone for them anyway because my current plex server only has 2 cores which makes VM’s kind of hard to do. I am getting ahead of myself here though, back to what I should actually do/get. The backup is what I am most concerned about atm. I want a copy of my pictures/documents on a secure PC elsewhere than my regular PC which has an OS drive and a regular disk drive (which currently has my Pictures/Documents on it.)
 
beers

beers

Moderator
Staff member
TheNamelessPoet said:
What is RAID considered then, just data redundancy?
Click to expand...
Generally individual drive redundancy. If one (or more, depending on the level you implement) hard disk goes poof, you can still rebuild all of the data by slotting in a new drive. That doesn't protect you if something else happens to the system like malware/deletion-accidents, or an electricity event poofs more drives than you designed in redundancy for, or if your house caught fire or something, so that's why it's not considered a backup.
TheNamelessPoet said:
@beers I am not quote sure what you mean an x86 based NAS?
Click to expand...
Some devices like Synology include a Celeron or i3, so it's a CPU based on the x86 architecture and supports virtualization. Other lower end ones usually use cheap/low-cost ARM implementations that don't offer the same capacity or support. It's generally the 'bridge' between 'full blown server' and 'all in one device'. They also can leverage the iGPU for quicksync to accelerate Plex transcoding, as an example.
TheNamelessPoet said:
when Raspberry Pi’s become more available, have one on the network to use for PFSense or something like it.
Click to expand...
I'd advise against that, the Pi doesn't really have enough compute to push a bunch of data and do operations against it like ACL or DPI. Even on OpenVPN setups you'll peg out at 30-40 mbit based on CPU limitations.

TheNamelessPoet said:
I want a copy of my pictures/documents on a secure PC elsewhere than my regular PC which has an OS drive and a regular disk drive (which currently has my Pictures/Documents on it.)
Click to expand...
What's your opinion on having them stored on the device and also syncing with cloud storage?
 
T

TheNamelessPoet

Member
beers said:
Generally individual drive redundancy. If one (or more, depending on the level you implement) hard disk goes poof, you can still rebuild all of the data by slotting in a new drive. That doesn't protect you if something else happens to the system like malware/deletion-accidents, or an electricity event poofs more drives than you designed in redundancy for, or if your house caught fire or something, so that's why it's not considered a backup.

Some devices like Synology include a Celeron or i3, so it's a CPU based on the x86 architecture and supports virtualization. Other lower end ones usually use cheap/low-cost ARM implementations that don't offer the same capacity or support. It's generally the 'bridge' between 'full blown server' and 'all in one device'. They also can leverage the iGPU for quicksync to accelerate Plex transcoding, as an example.

I'd advise against that, the Pi doesn't really have enough compute to push a bunch of data and do operations against it like ACL or DPI. Even on OpenVPN setups you'll peg out at 30-40 mbit based on CPU limitations.


What's your opinion on having them stored on the device and also syncing with cloud storage?
Click to expand...
I used one before for it, I just have that on my 3d printer now so I don't have one available. I may not have been pfsense, I think it was called piHole.

I do not want cloud storage. well not that someone else has on a computer somewhere. I don't mind setting up a cloud type thing inside my home. As long as it is not off-site on someone else hard drive.

hmmm, so maybe I SHOULD go more towards a rack then. I know I can get the ones that go right into the rack with processors that have more cores for lots of things.
 
Darren

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
I think a higher end Synology might be your best bet without going full blown server. I've been eyeing for over a year but never scraped the funds together. They can run multiple VMs and run on even Ryzen quad cores processors. I was looking at this one, just as an example.

www.newegg.com

Synology DS1621+ 0TB 6-bay NAS DiskStation (Diskless) - Newegg.com

Buy Synology DS1621+ Diskless System 6-bay NAS DiskStation (Diskless) with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!
www.newegg.com www.newegg.com
 
beers

beers

Moderator
Staff member
You can always self-encrypt your data if you wanted to, then you can guarantee that you're the only person with access to it.

Some of the r620 or r630 (or the 7xx series for 3.5" bays) gear (Dell) is coming down in price a lot, might largely depend on budget, power consumption and what you're trying to do. Things like VMware ESXi have a free license where you can run the hypervisor OS at no cost and would teach you a lot about virtualization. There's a huge amount of server-y options available. A small rack is honestly a handy thing to have, although you might want to measure dimensions before purchasing as many of them are more shallow than a server chassis would be.
 
H

Hellmut1956

New Member
I used to have a RAID 10 consisting of 4 1TB HDs. Twice one HD failed. Using the recover tool the damaged device was repaired. So it was kind of a HD and a Backup because I could recover when a single drive failed. I did operate it for 2 decades so it was a secure HD for my nrrds. The other aspect of it was that 20 years ago there was no device available to store the up to 2.6 TB my RAID10 system offered.

Now I have a new PC amd mo2 SD with 2 TB that offers a tremendous speed for both writing and reading. Just starting the system is just an issue of seconds, not even one minute. I am serious playing with the Microsoft Flight Simulator and that is the main responsable one for filling my SSD. As 20 years ago now the 4TB SSD are not mainstream and so I will have to wait.
 
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