What would you do?

[nicholson2002]

I am looking for ideas.

I am in the process of setting up a home NAS for the first time. After a lot of research, some good advice from these forums and several mind changes I have pretty much settled on the QNAP TVS-673, 6 x 3tb WD Reds, RAID6. I now want to set up an appropriate backup process for the NAS, on the basis of around 6TB of data now, growing over time (almost all media).

I have considered an online cloud service but with the impending demise of CrashPlan (my current provider), none of the other options are appealing for one reason or another. I think a NAS to NAS solution, with the backup NAS in a totally different location (another country actually) might work best. My current thinking is that a small 2bay QNAP NAS such as the TS-228 with, say, 8TB of HDD, no RAID might be the most cost-effective solution but I am really open to alternative ways of doing things.

If you were in my position, how would you go about setting up the backup solution?

[dolbyman]

cheap (even used) 4 bay ( 4x4TB RAID5) arm unit ... connected via lan2lan connection (external vpn routers)

thats what I would do

[Moogle Stiltzkin]

I am looking for ideas.

I have considered an online cloud service but with the impending demise of CrashPlan (my current provider), none of the other options are appealing for one reason or another. I think a NAS to NAS solution, with the backup NAS in a totally different location (another country actually) might work best. My current thinking is that a small 2bay QNAP NAS such as the TS-228 with, say, 8TB of HDD, no RAID might be the most cost-effective solution but I am really open to alternative ways of doing things.

If you were in my position, how would you go about setting up the backup solution?

Why is your 2bay only running single HD? why not raid1, 2 x 8tb?

offsite doesn't necessary mean has to be in a different country. just a different location would suffice. Point is they aren't in the same physical location so that if a fire, robbery, earthquake, tsunami or whatever disaster happens, then both NAS won't meet the same fate. Just imagine if Irma or Harvey hit your place, then your premises all flooded and you had no time to move out your NAS. thats why you have offsite backup my place is relatively boring, natural disaster wise. At most we are prone to thunder storms but we're pretty use to it

If your putting the 2nd NAS in a 2nd location, are you intending for co-location server housing?

A colocation (colo) is a data center facility in which a business can rent space for servers and other computing hardware. Typically, a colo provides the building, cooling, power, bandwidth and physical security while the customer provides servers and storage.

or do you actually have a 2nd residence/location elsewhere where you could setup your 2nd NAS with an internet connection of course?


Personally i'm doing NAS to NAS 6 bay units. With also a third NAS i use to store some data separately. All on the same LAN because my internet upload is pretty crummy. Not to mention with cloud services closing down left and right or just outright bonkers expensive, i figure that NAS to NAS for backup works very well for me

Usually though not everyone goes and buy 2 NAS at the same time. Usually they start out with a cloud backup first. For me i relegated my older 2nd NAS as backup once it came time to upgrade to a newer model. Then i can cycle out old vs new in that way, so i don't get 2 units that will both go EOL at the same time


Anyway like dolby suggest a cheap arm NAS would suffice for backup. My main NAS which i use daily is the one with the most cpu power since i do many things on it.


The downside for running your own NAS to NAS backup rather than opting for cloud, the responsibility for maintaining your backup NAS falls on you. HDD failure you got to replace not to mention initial purchase. Electricity bill for running anything as well.

[nicholson2002]

Why is your 2bay only running single HD? why not raid1, 2 x 8tb?

How important do you think it is to have redundancy for your backup?

offsite doesn't necessary mean has to be in a different country

Yes, I do understand that. It just happens to be that my backup NAS will be, either in another country where my brother-in-law lives, or with me in my apartment. I'm trying to weigh up the disadvantages of one over the other, while fully recognising that on-site backup comes with its potential problems as you have identified.

or do you actually have a 2nd residence/location elsewhere where you could setup your 2nd NAS with an internet connection of course?

Yes, that's the case.

All on the same LAN because my internet upload is pretty crummy

I'm in a similar position. Does that mean that you have chosen to co-locate your main NAS with your backup NAS? Given that the likelihood of natural disasters or even theft is very low in my case, I'm certainly considering that as an option, fully aware of the risks involved.

Very helpful post, thank you.

[Moogle Stiltzkin]

How important do you think it is to have redundancy for your backup?

tbh not sure. but i don't trust anything storing huge storage unless it's on raid1 or raid5 minimum. For a lot more hdds and even more storage, i'd even use raid6 despite lesser storage space potential. but with 4-5hdd 4tb each, i'm content with raid5 despite the risks, as i got a backup.

maybe someone has a better understanding for this. cause i too would like to know

[P3R]

How important do you think it is to have redundancy for your backup?

I'd use RAID with any NAS. In a 2-bay RAID 1 and in larger NASes RAID 5 or RAID 6 depending on the size an number of disks and reliability requirements. RAID in a NAS adds system reliability, convenience for the administrator and simple storage expansion.

I think the advice already given by dolbyman in this thread was excellent. A low end 4-bay NAS will allow you to expand the backup storage to keep it at least somewhere close to main NAS capacity. With a 2-bay you have to go with risky disk configuratons like RAID 0 or JBOD to expand above the single disk capacity and to get there you'd need to reinitialize the storage (not what you'd want to do if it is your only backup) and backup all data again.

With a low end 4-bay you can do an online migration to RAID 5 and retain the backup on disks when you need to expand the backup NAS and you can later add a 4th disk, again with all data retained during the expansion process.

Even if the risk for natural disasters and theft is low where you live you always have the risk for fire if you keep the backup at the same location. In my opinion at least one backup copy should always be kept off-site. Also if the budget is tight, I wouldn't rule out the alternative with an external disk dock/enclosure and rotating backup disks with at least one disk always stored off-site.

NAS-to-NAS backups normally requires less regular administration but it's also significantly more costly than external disk backup.

Personally I backup my main NAS to two other NAS locations and have an additional external backup disk. Costly yes but my family and I think our personal data is priceless.

[nicholson2002]

Thank you, sounds sensible.

With a low end 4-bay you can do an online migration to RAID 5 and retain the backup on disks when you need to expand the backup NAS and you can later add a 4th disk, again with all data retained during the expansion process.

Would you mind expanding on that a little? I have to admit that I don't really understand what you are suggesting.

[P3R]

Would you mind expanding on that a little? I have to admit that I don't really understand what you are suggesting.

1. You start out with 2*6 (or any disk size you prefer) TB in RAID 1 for 6 TB storage available for your backups. You could even start with a single 6 TB disk but that would make your NAS less reliable and you need RAID 1 anyway to continue with the expansion in steps 2 and 3 below but a single disk is a possibility until you can afford RAID 1.
2. When you need more more storage you add another 6 TB and migrate the RAID 1 into RAID 5 and suddenly you have 12 TB available for your backups. This migration can be done with all backup data still available on the NAS.
3. When you've outgrown your 12 TB backup you add another 6 TB disk to have 18 TB available for your backups. This migration can be done with all backup data still available on the NAS.

[nicholson2002]

Got it, thanks!