How To Backup Your FreeNAS 11.3 Using ZFS Replication

Hi Tom,

Following your instructions I have the two top level Datasets on my FreeNAS-11.3-U4.1 replicating so I’m really pleased. However I have a question

On your advice I thought I’d test the replications had worked by restoring a “clone”. However it says I can only clone back to the same pool. Which is OK but not ideal. I was hoping to clone it back to another pool I have set up on the same machine specifically for this task.

Have you had any success Cloning to a different pool, if so how?

I want to test the replications are working but I’m scared of overwriting the original files.

Many thanks in advance.

Peter

Ideally the replication is for safeguarding against failure of the main system at which point you would just reverse to the process to the new main system. For file restores, just use snapshots on the main system,.

Tom, OK I’m a bit of a noob on this, can you restore at individual file level with snapshots?

Many thanks in advance

Peter

No, snapshots represent all of the files of the dataset at that point in time, it’s not granular. The way to get an individual file back is to restore the snapshot to another location.