NAS4Free

PWR_USR

PWR_USR

PWR_USR

Associate
Joined
14 Jan 2009
Posts
108
Location
Chelmsford, GB
Hi All,

i have just set up a NAS4Free box at work to share an SSD drive with an access database used by 30+ people.

two questions really,
are snapshots a good way to keep this backed up? like if the database file were to become corrupt would i be able to revert to a snapshot and restore the drive to an earlier date?

i have set up the email reporting, but is there any way to confirm a snapshot through email? and is there any way to measure the bandwidth used over the last 24 hours and include this as part of the email report?

Thanks in advance
 
I recently implemented FreeNAS with snapshots.

Are snapshots a good way to keep this backed up? like if the database file were to become corrupt would i be able to revert to a snapshot and restore the drive to an earlier date?
Snapshots can be good if files are deleted or overwrote, however don't forget to make sure you have another drive replicating the main file structure. Otherwise if that drive dies then so does your system. Preferably a raid system would be the way to go.

I have set up the email reporting, but is there any way to confirm a snapshot through email? and is there any way to measure the bandwidth used over the last 24 hours and include this as part of the email report?
I haven't implemented NAS4Free, however this may possibly be asked better in their support forums.
 
Thanks for your reply :)
yep, i have it set to take a snapshot every night, i also have the drive backed up to another server every night. should be all good there.

ive had a look around the forums for some simple email scripts but haven't found much. its not a problem, would just be nice to get a more informative report.

i have come up with a new problem however,

for the first 10 days it was running perfectly but the last couple days it seems to drop off the network for a few seconds at a time. and it only seems to happen at around 5pm each day. I am keeping a much closer eye on it now to see what exactly is happening.

all I have seen so far is that the server stops responding to ping requests for a few seconds, then back to normal. i think it does that 2-3 times
nothing shows up in the logs at all during these events. i'm at a loss as to what might be causing it.
is there any way i could try to diagnose this problem?

Thanks in advance
 
Don't use Snapshots as a backup method!! They should be used a temporary measure before doing some work with the VM, e.g. take a snapshot before doing a windows update. This way if the update fails you can easily roll back. VMware recommend that you shouldn't have more than 2-3 snapshots in a chain, and you shouldn't run from a snapshot for more than 24-72 hours.

The snapshot file is not a copy of the original VMDK file it is a delta file, so changes are written to the snapshot file not the VMDK. This means that when you delete a snapshot it has to write the changes to the VMDK file which can take a long time especially for DB/File servers that have lots of disk I/O going on.

Use good backup software, something like the free version of Veeam for example.

Syngress
 
nope, not virtualising at all, dedicated NAS4Free box.
i am taking regular ZFS snapshots.
sorry for the confusion
 
Syngress said:
Nope, It was me seeing Snapshots and jumping to conclusions :)

Snapshot away!! ;)
Click to expand...

YbUVXdZ.jpg
 
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