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<body class='hmmessage'><div dir='ltr'>I have used cygwin in the past to back up windows machines to linux servers with rsync. It worked very well for me.<br><br><div>> Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2014 20:44:34 -0500<br>> From: paul_nijjar@yahoo.ca<br>> To: kwlug-disc@kwlug.org<br>> Subjct: [kwlug-disc] btrfs/zfs for backups<br>> <br>> I am officially unhappy with Microsoft DFS replication. Earlier this<br>> year I set up a couple of Windows Server 2008 R2 boxes to synchronize<br>> big backup files over a wireless link, and it does not work well at<br>> all. So now I am re-evaluating, and once again thinking of using some<br>> Free Software filesystems for my job. <br>> <br>> I was thinking of scrapping the DFS replication and trying to use<br>> rsync on Windows instead, but as far as I can tell all binaries of<br>> rsync on 64-bit Windows are terrible. <br>> <br>> My inclination is to go with Debian/Ubuntu fileservers that<br>> synchronize backup files (one way). Once upon a time somebody (I think<br>> it was Chris Irwin) got me all excited by talking about btrfs send and<br>> receive, that would allow you to send snapshots of incremental changes<br>> to remote hosts via SSH. That sounds exciting, but The Internet (or at<br>> least this StackExchange post:<br>> http://serverfault.com/questions/285878/is-btrfs-production-ready ) it<br>> seems that I should not consider this, and should go with ZFS instead<br>> (which also has this functionality).<br>> <br>> So here are my options: <br>> - Try btrfs on Debian/Ubuntu and hope it is mature enough to work for<br>> my use case<br>> - Try ZFS on Linux the way Lori does<br>> - Try ZFS on FreeBSD or some other OS where it is native<br>> - Find some way to get large, effective filesync working on the<br>> Windows servers I have already built (ideally with FLOSS)<br>> <br>> Here is some information about the infrastructure: <br>> - The fileserver will consist of a bunch of Samba shares <br>> - Symantec BackupExec (yes, I know) will write big backup files to<br>> these shares. Most of the files are 4GB large, but there are a few<br>> files that are almost 100GB large.<br>> - The two servers are connected via a wireless link that effectively<br>> runs at 100Mbit<br>> - The backup storage media are Western digital Green drives (sorry<br>> Cedric)<br>> - The servers themselves are nothing special: 64-bit intel<br>> workstations with 2-4GB of RAM. <br>> - These are backup files, so data integrity is important<br>> - We can assume there are 100s of GB of data backed up each week,<br>> although I am not sure whether this means hundreds of files are<br>> changing each week. (This could be the case; BackupExec has a habit<br>> of doing things in the most inconvenient way possible.) <br>> <br>> I am interested in hearing about how well btrfs works for the btrfs<br>> send/receive scenario I am thinking about, and any advice<br>> strengthening/contradicting the StackExchange opinion. If people are<br>> using ZFS (in particular ZFS on Linux) with zfs send/receive in this<br>> manner then I am interested in that information as well. If people<br>> have other options (such as an effective rsync option for Windows 64<br>> bit) then feel free to chime in. I am more interested in experiences<br>> than speculation. <br>> <br>> - Paul <br>> <br>> -- <br>> http://pnijjar.freeshell.org<br>> <br>> <br>> _______________________________________________<br>> kwlug-disc mailing list<br>> kwlug-disc@kwlug.org<br>> http://kwlug.org/mailman/listinfo/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org<br></div> </div></body>
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