How I backup my data

In this post I will describe my backup procedure for my NAS at home. This is mainly so I can look it up myself. I am using TrueNas Core (running as a VM in Proxmox). My pools are encrypted by default.

Initial Backup

  • create a new pool with the UI
  • DO NOT create a dataset
  • assuming your existing pool is called tank_1 and you want to backup the dataset data
  • create a snapshot of tank_1/data
  • do an initial copy of a snapshot with zfs send tank_1/data@<snapshot> | pv | zfs receive -x encryption -vF tank_2/data

Incremental Backup

  • assuming your existing pool is called tank_1 and you want to backup the dataset data to another pool called tank_2
  • look up the most recent common snapshots between your pools (let’s call that one old_snapshot)
  • take a new snapshot of tank_1/data (let’s call that one new_snapshot)
  • zfs send -i tank_1/data@old_snapshot tank_1/data@new_snapshot | pv | zfs receive -x encryption -vF tank_2/data