Title basically. I have like 7tb of data on my current raid array, and in the future, I plan to wipe it and make it ZFS, with 3 additional 7tb drives. I’d like to not lose all the data. I’m sure I can’t be the only one who has this issue. What do you guys use for temporary backup solution, while repurposing your HW.

My current server runs Ubuntu server bare metal. I’m thinking of running Proxmox, than VM of TrueNAS, for ZFS, sharing the storage pool across, what would than be a Proxmox cluster of 2 machines (potentially a 3rd in the future). I think that this is probably the best way.

  • MegaPegasusReindeer@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    Digital Ocean has by the hour rates. You could create a droplet with attached volumes. I’m not sure what the limits are on volumes, but you can probably attach more than one. Then you can just delete it all when done.

  • limeice@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    Convince a friend that they need a storage solution, buy the drives for them, use them temporarily and make a friend really happy and slightly poorer.

  • DontBflat@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    Why no just setup 2 3 drive vdevs and combine them into a pool. Ie. One vdev, copy your data. Add the old drives as a second vdev and add it to the pool?

  • dazchad@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    Can’t you setup a new array with your new 3 drives, copy the data over, then expand your array with your old drives? IIRC zfs added support for expanding pools last year or so?

    If you want to use a cloud provider, then your main problem will be uploading this much data and then downloading it back again, both price and time wise.

    An easier solution is in fact copying the data over to another storage. Maybe borrow some pendrives from friends/family?

    • brando56894@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      If you want to use a cloud provider, then your main problem will be uploading this much data and then downloading it back again, both price and time wise.

      If you happen to have a symmetric gig pipe (or larger) that definitely helps :) I currently have 27 TBs in the cloud, for most of it, it was just easier to re-download it since the cloud VM had a 10 gig pipe compared to my gig down and 30 Mbps up (cries in Comcast…I moved and now I have access to AT&T fiber at up to 5 Gbps, its like $250/month though). I thnk I’m gonna move everything back locally, doing everything in the cloud was a temporary solution for when I lived with my parents for a few months. They weren’t too happy about the electricity bill of my 15 HDD, 8 NVME drive, 2x10G nic, 128 GB ECC, 1KW PSU running a Threadripper 2970wx, liquid cooled of course …and then having the AC running 24/7 to keep i cool. I had all of that crammed in a 4U server, which was pared down from my larger on which I was using at my other apartment.

      with could storage I find I’m able to download large files from the webUI, but I could attach the bucket and just get the data from here.

    • MyButtholeIsTight@alien.topB
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      1 year ago

      Expanding an array does work but you get less usable space compared to starting a new array from scratch. The old data doesn’t get restriped so you get a less efficient parity-to-data ratio, and this effect accumulates as you add more drives.

  • SeriousPlankton2000@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    Make a backup, set the new drives as a LVM, move over the files and grow the fs to use the emptied discs.

    You do have backup disks, don’t you?

  • ruph06@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    Make azure free acc, create VM and add 15tb, install self hosted cloud service, transfer your data there, done.

    VM should last about a month, but don’t send sketchy files like porn or something.

  • poultryinmotion1@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    Backblaze would be the cheapest option, but 15tb is going to take a while unless you have an incredible upload speed.

  • brando56894@alien.topB
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    1 year ago

    I have like 7tb of data on my current raid array, and in the future, I plan to wipe it and make it ZFS, with 3 additional 7tb drives. I’d like to not lose all the data. I’m sure I can’t be the only one who has this issue. What do you guys use for temporary backup solution, while repurposing your HW.

    Realize I have no way to backup 10s of TBs, cry, destroy my ZFS pool and start over. 90% of my stuff is media which I can easily reacquire from Usenet in about 1.5-2 weeks of 24/7 downloading. So, not really a hassle, it just takes forever.

    If you have good upload bandwidth (like if you’re on fiber and have a 1 gig upload) IDriveE2.com has pretty reasonable pricing, it’s object storage (think S3) not block storage (any normal filesystem) though, but if you’re just using it for a backup that shouldn’t matter. I apparently got in right before they doubled their prices and got 50 TB for a year for $500. They have “on demand pricing” which is more expensive than their yearly plans, but it’s currently $4/TB/month so that would only cost you like $30…assuming you can upload all your data to their servers.

  • kring1@alien.topB
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    1 year ago
    • Buy 2 20 TB disks and put them in an old PC you have lying around.
    • Create a ZFS mirror on that PC
    • transfer the data to that PC
    • create your ZFS array in your server and transfer the data back
    • use the PC with the 20 TB mirror as backup system