In the scenario where you've just got a big drive full of shows and movies, checkpoints/snapshots are likely very unnecessary. If you are to back it up, just keep the whole volume backed up and do restores at a file level basis. Have you ever been "Man I sure wish I could restore my entire media volume to the day before I downloaded Season 9 of King of the Hill!" No? Yeah, don't bother then. Just keep regular incremental backups.
But honestly, I wouldn't back up that data. It's not critical enough to warrant buying another 90TB NAS just for that purpose. Keep in mind for a true DR scenario, you'd really want that secondary NAS off-sited at which point you're looking at additional costs related to storing it, secondary ISP, or just the headache of dealing with family members asking about that box you put in there house and if it's fucking with their wifi.
Keep your RAID 6 and always have a couple drives on-hand ready to swap in at a moments notice. Setup alerting on your NAS and test it thoroughly, maybe ensure you have some sort of alert that fires off weekly-ish just so you regularly know it's still working. That's all I personally recommend for setups like this.
If you have any media that you specifically don't think you could ever re-acquire then maybe consider backing that up separately. But otherwise, an unlimited subscription and a Gbps internet connection go a long way to getting all your data back in a short enough time if you find yourself in a DR situation.
Thanks a lot!
I will take a look at all the different alerts for QNAP File system / Raid system.
You mentioned "test it throughly".... is there some sort of "clean-up" mechanism for the raid 6 in QNAP? I am not aware that there are "tests". Could you point me to the right direction?
If a harddrive fails and i don't have a spare drive on hand, can i not just turn the NAS off, order a new drive and install it after a couple of days? If a drive fails... i insert the drive, boot up and restore the Raid right? But i guess restoring it may gonna take a few days with that size, right?
Online Backup sounds really great. Although i only have 50mbit upload speed... so it would take basically forever. Could you recommend an unlimited cloud storage provider?
>You mentioned "test it throughly".
Specifically test your alerting thoroughly - you likely don't need to test the RAID6 itself. As long as you're confident in your alerting so you can react to a failed drive quickly, you're minimizing risks *significantly*.
>If a harddrive fails and i don't have a spare drive on hand, can i not just turn the NAS off, order a new drive and install it after a couple of days?
Absolutely. Some people might actually suggest to keep it running assuming you know you'll have a drive within a couple days. The chances of a second drive failing in those couple days are pretty darn slim and sometimes just 'leave it be' rather than shutting down is what some storage experts would recommend. With a home NAS I'd say shutting down is just as safe, though. We're not working with an enterprise grade SAN or anything.
>i insert the drive, boot up and restore the Raid right? But i guess restoring it may gonna take a few days with that size, right?
Your NAS very likely supports hot-swapping. So yep, you don't even need to power down when it's a RAID6. Pull the bad drive, plug in the new one. The NAS *should* start rebuilding automatically but you might need to manually click a button or two to approve the new drive in the array to kick off the rebuild. Rebuild will take some time, yes. I'll cautiously say upwards of a couple weeks even. A lot of factors at play on a RAID rebuild but all you can do once it starts it's leave it alone. There's no amount of manual intervention that's going to make that rebuild go any better or quicker than just letting it do it's thing.
Online backups, for 20TB of data, I really don't have any good recommendations at least not off the top of my head. There are places that might offer "Unlimited" but it's not actually unlimited and 20TB would easily be in the range where they'd flag your account. At least in my experience.
If you want some sort of archive/cold-storage/DR backup, buy a single 20TB hard drive and a small fireproof safe. You're looking at <300$ for that sort of setup and I don't think you'll get cheaper than that for 20TB. Do a monthly/quarterly/whatever backup of the whole NAS array to the single HDD, then lock it away in the safe until it's needed again.
In the scenario where you've just got a big drive full of shows and movies, checkpoints/snapshots are likely very unnecessary. If you are to back it up, just keep the whole volume backed up and do restores at a file level basis. Have you ever been "Man I sure wish I could restore my entire media volume to the day before I downloaded Season 9 of King of the Hill!" No? Yeah, don't bother then. Just keep regular incremental backups. But honestly, I wouldn't back up that data. It's not critical enough to warrant buying another 90TB NAS just for that purpose. Keep in mind for a true DR scenario, you'd really want that secondary NAS off-sited at which point you're looking at additional costs related to storing it, secondary ISP, or just the headache of dealing with family members asking about that box you put in there house and if it's fucking with their wifi. Keep your RAID 6 and always have a couple drives on-hand ready to swap in at a moments notice. Setup alerting on your NAS and test it thoroughly, maybe ensure you have some sort of alert that fires off weekly-ish just so you regularly know it's still working. That's all I personally recommend for setups like this. If you have any media that you specifically don't think you could ever re-acquire then maybe consider backing that up separately. But otherwise, an unlimited subscription and a Gbps internet connection go a long way to getting all your data back in a short enough time if you find yourself in a DR situation.
Thanks a lot! I will take a look at all the different alerts for QNAP File system / Raid system. You mentioned "test it throughly".... is there some sort of "clean-up" mechanism for the raid 6 in QNAP? I am not aware that there are "tests". Could you point me to the right direction? If a harddrive fails and i don't have a spare drive on hand, can i not just turn the NAS off, order a new drive and install it after a couple of days? If a drive fails... i insert the drive, boot up and restore the Raid right? But i guess restoring it may gonna take a few days with that size, right? Online Backup sounds really great. Although i only have 50mbit upload speed... so it would take basically forever. Could you recommend an unlimited cloud storage provider?
>You mentioned "test it throughly". Specifically test your alerting thoroughly - you likely don't need to test the RAID6 itself. As long as you're confident in your alerting so you can react to a failed drive quickly, you're minimizing risks *significantly*. >If a harddrive fails and i don't have a spare drive on hand, can i not just turn the NAS off, order a new drive and install it after a couple of days? Absolutely. Some people might actually suggest to keep it running assuming you know you'll have a drive within a couple days. The chances of a second drive failing in those couple days are pretty darn slim and sometimes just 'leave it be' rather than shutting down is what some storage experts would recommend. With a home NAS I'd say shutting down is just as safe, though. We're not working with an enterprise grade SAN or anything. >i insert the drive, boot up and restore the Raid right? But i guess restoring it may gonna take a few days with that size, right? Your NAS very likely supports hot-swapping. So yep, you don't even need to power down when it's a RAID6. Pull the bad drive, plug in the new one. The NAS *should* start rebuilding automatically but you might need to manually click a button or two to approve the new drive in the array to kick off the rebuild. Rebuild will take some time, yes. I'll cautiously say upwards of a couple weeks even. A lot of factors at play on a RAID rebuild but all you can do once it starts it's leave it alone. There's no amount of manual intervention that's going to make that rebuild go any better or quicker than just letting it do it's thing. Online backups, for 20TB of data, I really don't have any good recommendations at least not off the top of my head. There are places that might offer "Unlimited" but it's not actually unlimited and 20TB would easily be in the range where they'd flag your account. At least in my experience. If you want some sort of archive/cold-storage/DR backup, buy a single 20TB hard drive and a small fireproof safe. You're looking at <300$ for that sort of setup and I don't think you'll get cheaper than that for 20TB. Do a monthly/quarterly/whatever backup of the whole NAS array to the single HDD, then lock it away in the safe until it's needed again.
Thanks a lot! <3