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Welcome to the zfs-backup wiki!

This project started with the curiosity of gaining an understanding of the ZFS filesystem and quickly evolved in a full-blown personal backup system!

Join me in my journey towards making ZFS easy to understand and immediately useful with real hands-on experience.

This project is the result of a lot of sleepless nights, but I also had a lot of fun in watching evolve in a tool I use on a daily basis to hold my dearest memories: my family photos, music, and personal videos.

Enjoy!

Quick Summary

• Use your Linux box as a NAS Server with ZFS RAID disk configuration
• Use your leftover Raspberry Pi or similar as a NAS Backup server
• Monitor backup progress with a simple progress bar
• Harness the power of ZFS Snapshots and Samba to have all history of both your NAS AND your backup server at your fingertips.
• Access to your current data ant its past history on Windows as "Previous Versions" - just like Windows Restore Points!
• Easily configure different backup destinations for multiple backup copies
• Make use of ZFS's industrial-grade features to enjoy a secure upgrade path when more disk capacity is needed

Table of Contents

1. System Summary
2. Linux Packages Installation
3. User Configuration on the Local Server
4. User Configuration on the Remote Server
5. ZFS Pool Creation on Local Server
6. ZFS Pool Creation on Remote Server
7. Local Server Samba Configuration
8. First Backup
9. Remote Server Samba Configuration
10. Normal Backup Operations
11. Making Snapshots on the NAS only
12. Backup after several snapshots
13. Backup to Multiple Destinations
14. Basic Disk Management
15. How to change disks in a ZFS Pool
16. My Backup Disk is almost full!
17. References
18. History

So let's start with the summary.