that look pretty cool software solution for backup clients to one server
i have first question to all of you
i would like to know
my server has 6 DISKS of 2TB
and also it have 6 partition
so, how i can add 6 patch on the server configuration
and also configure some client store the Incremental file backup on partition 1
and more some client Incremental file backup on partition 2
and full file backup will save on partition 3 and 4
and image backup will be save on partition 5 and 6
how can i do that
because i see at the server configuration i have only one location there i can chose the all the backups will save
in my company all are clients run WINDOWS 10
the server right now installed also on WINDOWS 10
after i do the all lab tests
i will move the server to linux environment on production
What you need to do is create a raid out of the drives for one big storage device.
If you have a good raid card, raid 10 or raid 6 are relatively safe options.
If you do not have a good raid card – using JBOD / HBA / or motherboard SATA, then perhaps btrfs raid 10. (avoid btrfs raid 5/6 as they are unstable afaik.)
Doing raid 0 = 12 TB of space that will die and lose everything. (Probably).
Doing raid 10, will get you 3 mirrors, or ~ 6 TB of usable space, mirrored so if a drive dies you do not lose your backups.
The point of doing the above, is that URBackup will essentially see a single 6 TB drive, even though it is actually 6 2Tb. So you can specify that single 6TB drive as the backup location.
I’m probably the only guy in the room who will suggest this, but… you could span the drives together.
In my setup, I have 5 2TB drives that are all spanned together at the software level, but they are striped at the hardware level. (Yeah, I still don’t understand that.) Either way, I have about 10TB of space to use.
Supposedly, getting data back from spanned drives is easier than striped. I don’t know how true that is going to be when I absolutely need it, but I’ll find out.
So you have 12TB (raw), 6-10TB usable. You can install Linux/FreeBSD on the server and then use ZFS (or if you think BTRFS is stable enough for your use case, use that). If you really don’t care about your data, use a cheap RAID controller or Windows Storage Spaces (I think I just threw up in my mouth a little for recommending this route) although you’re very likely to lose/corrupt data that way at some point.
The server does like to hard link your files, so the files actually have to be in the ‘same volume’, any tricks (symlinks or mount points) have not worked for me. I personally would install FreeNAS on your machine, if you really need Windows, have it virtualized on the FreeNAS and perhaps access a zvol over iSCSI. I’ve done this for me (shared out 10TB from a 200TB volume for UrBackup to a Linux VM)
You can build a FreeNAS server and use the RAIDZ2 or Z3 filesystem (Google it).
Then you can install the URBackup server directly into a jail (Google FreeNAS Jail) and it will backup till doomsday.
You will need to look at recommended / compatible hardware before building the server. It’ll only frustrate you and cost more money if you don’t. I suggest hot swap drive bays to reduce downtime etc.
you could use Drive Bender in Windows to manage Disk pools. Or Windows Storage places.
Currently I’m having an issue using DriveBender with Urbackup. But until root cause clear. Drive Bender is no recommended.
@Guy: You can do it all on the same machine using virtualization. To the ‘system’ it looks like it’s two (or more) different machines, but all except one of them is virtualized.
It will work but it is not a good spec.
It will be good experience for you.
Maybe you should read the recommended hardware guide in the FreeNAS website.
As i have not seen an answer that full covers your problem, lets summarize what you have, and what you want to accomlish:
You want to use urbackup in production on linux, but now testin git on windows 10.
in the production, you have a server, but no raid configured it seems
you want the backups to be separated. it is not possible, the backups will go into one folder and to its sub-folders. Actually as it is probably only because you have not set up one big volume, but you see only the separate disks, you are worried about the locations. Answers for point 2 will make it clear for you.
Urbackup is fine on linux. You may use the storage options offered by the linux system, and it will be one location for all of your backup destinations.
Answer for your concern about the storage: above 1 Tb sized disks, you must use a solution, that can save you from loosing not one, but 2 disks. The reason for this is simple enough, to rebuild a lost drive (assuming that you are not fool enough not to use redundancy) above 1 Tb might take even about 3 or more days!!! Meanwhile the overloaded disks will struggle with the work, and you might loose another disk as well. That will make all your data lost. The probability of that with low end raid cards or software raid and sata disls are quite high actually, and i have seen it happen several times.
So use a raid solution, let it be preferrably a hardware raid card, or a strong CPU and a software raid (from disk manager in windows, or disk pools, or mdraid in linux). Use a raid level that supports at least 2 drive failures. In your case it means either a raid 50 (cold spare could be ok in 48 hrs response time) that would give you 4 Tb storage, and quite ok performance vene for compression and deduplication. Or you may use raid 10, that case you will have 6 Tb. I would vote for the latter. Keep in mind, that some raid options are not available from the windows standard disk manager, and that in windows you will probably have to use a separated OS partition, as that could only be mirrored… In windows if you use server OS, then you will have compression, and deduplication as well, and the option for the disk pools. Of course on a decent hardware. And with this you do not have to worry about the locations of thabackups, they could be in your big partition.
By the way, i do not recommend to implement anything without a basic understanding of the underlying stuff at a minimal level, so google a bit as there may be other caveats waiting for you if something you misunderstood.
