Keeping two systems synchronized

Computer Hardware & Server Infrastructure Builds
1

Tom, I’ve been watching your YouTube videos for the last couple of weeks and have found them really informative. Appreciate the hard work you’ve put into producing them!

But now I have a couple of questions about how to keep two system synchronized using rsync and/or zfs replication.

Can I, by using zfs replication, synchronize folders from one machine to another?

Or is this something better left to rsync?

I have two FreeNAS systems; one live and production and the other a clone of the first. I have 8 publicly shared folders on the production box that I’ve been using rsync to keep synchronized to the clone. Once a week I boot the clone, run my manual rsync command on it to pull the changes from the production box to the clone.

I have two issues with this procedure. The first is that it can take up to four hours to run, moving data over a 1GB link and the second is that my user’s private folders cannot be copied due to permissions violations.

Can a zfs replication solve this or is a zfs replication only good for backing up the pool? I have never used either replication and/or snapshots with my FreeNAS systems.

Thanks for any advice.

Greg …

2

ZFS replication is very efficient and does not care about permission because it is working a layer below synchronizing the data at the block level.

3

Correct me if I’m wrong but zfs replication targets aren’t really to be used primarly as vdevs on the backup machine?? I thought to properly use a zfs replica you would clone the dataset. Reading the OPs post I’m interpreting he wants a sychronization feature – meaning changes would need to be bidirectional. I don’t think zfs works like this does it??

4

Correct, ZFS is not a bi-directional sync.