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RAID is not a backup: the 3-2-1 rule, honestly (chartmann1590.github.io)
submitted 2 weeks ago by to c/homelab@selfhosted.forum
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What actually counts as a copy under the 3-2-1 rule, why a RAID mirror or a snapshot only protects against one kind of failure, and the one-page inventory that exposes the gaps.

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[–] 3 points 2 weeks ago

Sloppy, somawhat difficult to read. Should use a model that's better at writing English. 😄

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    [–] 1 point 2 weeks ago

    I hate this take, and it seems to contradict itself.

    What actually counts A copy counts when it survives the loss of the thing it was copied from. That one sentence settles most arguments about what is and isn't a backup.

    So doesn't raid count then? If a drive fails and the second drive survives the loss, it is a backup...

    Just because the copy is synchronous doesn't mean it isn't a backup, it just means it protects from a different type of failure.

    • RAID: protects against a drive failure
    • Snapshot: protects against user failure (rm *)
    • Replication: protects against admin failure (zpool destroy)
    • Offsite tape/async backup: protects against replication corruption, and total site failure

    These are all backups, just with different recovery point objectives/recovery time objectives, and all just as important.

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    [–] 1 point 2 weeks ago

    Bold of you to assume I can afford backups, or redundancy

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    20 comments in c/homelab@lemmy.ml view that post
    [–] 25 points 2 weeks ago (15 children)

    I feel like nothing I do is "right".

    Also, I feel like I can't afford to back things up. Not with the prices of hardware and cloud storage.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

    Worth checking out borgbase (which supports restic, not only borg) and hetzber backup solutions. There’s also backblaze if your cool with American servers, or easy backup if you want s3 style storage.

    Prices are still relatively affordable.

    You also don’t have to back up everything. I back up my configuration and documents only.

    It’s better to do backups imperfectly than not at all.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

    You also don’t have to back up everything. I back up my configuration and documents only.

    Yeah I mean I have to go this way. My home server is 38 tb and I'm about 60% on that. Alot of it is archival stuff I know better data hoarders than I are keeping on their stacks.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 weeks ago (1 child)

    That is a lot of data, I’m jealous. I want that much storage space.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 weeks ago

    Yeah I guess it can appear that way.

    Lets just put it this way though, for one work project, I expect to have to work through ~250 tb of data. We won't keep it all on disk at once, but over the course of the next year, that was what we spitballed needs to get processed. The system once finished will have to throughput almost a TB a week (which imo, is nothing).

    THen in terms of my own storage and what that is. Its some full disk image backups of old machines where I'm lazy and haven't bothered to clean/ winnow it down to what I really need. Then its two google drive backups of a bout a tb a piece. Then I've got a reddit archive of all posts and commens. Thats a couple ter.

    Then I have all of the epstien files backed up. The original releases as they came down. Including the redaction mistakes they made. Thats a bunch.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 week ago (2 children)

    Totally get that. You don't have to back up everything, just the stuff you can't replace: photos, documents, configs. That set is usually small enough for an old USB drive plus a cheap or free offsite option. Rebuildable stuff (media, ISOs, containers you can redeploy) can skip it. Imperfect backups of the important 5% beat a perfect plan you never get to.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (1 child)

    Problem I have is so much of my data is "projects" where like, only god and my client know what random shit they'll ask for.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 weeks ago (3 children)

    Marketplace is your friend. 7th gen intel computers can be found for cheap because Windows doesn't support them anymore. Wipe the boot disk, install OMV and done. Now the hard part is of course hard disks. Still scour the used market but at least OMV will let you mismatch disk sizes with SnapRAID+MergerFS as long as you aren't using ZFS and the parity drive is the same or bigger than the largest data drive.

    For most people you don't need to go extremely huge.

    Then just set a nightly rsync.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

    I dont engage with corporate social media.

    And craigslist is busted.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago

    Yeah, it does feel like that. I wanted to backup my photos but eventually realized that instead of just uploading them to a NAS, I could use something like Immich to get a nice gallery. Immich even calls uploading from your phone backup. So my photos are backed up now, right? Nope, you have to back up Immich too. Ah, ok, it has these database backups, that’s fine right? Nope, that’s just a db dump, you need to backup the actual photo files. Ok, I will setup RAID so they are mirrored to another hard drive. RAID IS NOT BACKUP!!! Ok, fine, I will rsync them to another external hard drive periodically. Nope, what if your place burns down? Ok, I will also spend 13€ a month on a Hetzner storage box and upload an encrypted backup there with borg. Where are you storing your borg passphrase? Fine, I’ll write it down on a piece of paper and give that to my parents to store at their house. Am I done? Is that 3-2-1? Yeah, but it’s not automated, you should have a backup server. Aaaahhhhhh!

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    • [–] 3 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

    But it feeeeels like a backup, and isn't that what really matters? In my setup I have 3 drives (2x 8Tb, 1x 14 Tb) and I finally have the opportunity to do some consolidation and not just have 3 single drives plugged into a server. Zfs, raid , a dedicated backup drive, but I'm still figuring out what the layout should be.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 child)

    Put the two 8tb in a mirrored raid so if one fails you keep your data. Use the 14tb as a backup that is left unplugged for longevity.

    That would be my recommendation which is similar to what I have (4 x 6 tb for twelve gigs of redundant storage) and a couple of 8tb drives I keep for occasional (monthly or so) archival backup.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 week ago

    Ha, it absolutely feels like one, right up until a bad sync or a fat-fingered rm hits every disk at once. With 2x8 TB plus a 14 TB, one layout people often land on is mirroring the two 8s (ZFS mirror) for live data and using the 14 TB as a separate backup target (snapshots replicated to it), plus something offsite for the stuff you can't lose. That gets you redundancy and an actual backup out of the same three drives.

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