From: Joann Mõndresku Date: Tue, 16 May 2023 05:05:59 +0000 (+0300) Subject: NAS I - Build and Borgbackup X-Git-Url: https://git.based.quest/%24%24URL?a=commitdiff_plain;h=d5f70bedf4ca5e06af580bf2c2b910c53bdfbe96;p=web-hugo.git NAS I - Build and Borgbackup --- diff --git a/content/posts/nas1-build-and-borgbackup.md b/content/posts/nas1-build-and-borgbackup.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2c241c3 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/posts/nas1-build-and-borgbackup.md @@ -0,0 +1,137 @@ +--- +title: "NAS Part I - The Build & Borgbackup Initial Impressions" +date: 2023-05-15T20:40:00+03:00 +description: "Almost a year later, the rumours about untimely death of my NAS build have been greatly exaggarated" +tags: [backup, linux, review, opensource, opinion, nas] +type: blog +draft: false +--- + +# NAS - Part I + +If you have been reading since last year July, you may know of my "Project ReuseNAS" - you may also +know that my build date estimate for "end of 2022" or "Q1 2023" was never met as per obvious lack of posts on that front. + +When I was originally planning the NAS build, I was very much all over the idea, that I could reuse all of my old PC components. +Over time after discussing with members of the based.quest community, we came to the conclusion that I would be severly handicapping +myself with the hardware I already had laying around. + +I was unable to find a satisfactory case for the NAS build that could hold the HDDs on them - apparently cases with 4x 3.5" + 2x 2.5" bays are quite uncommon, +as such I ended up buying a brand new case. + +Further I did not trust getting an used power supply or used SSD/HDD drives. CPU cooler I most likely could have found used, but the project was starting to drag +on for far too long - so I ended up getting a brand new one. I know, impatient. + +My original plan was also to buy 4x4TB IronWolf Pro drives - as of right now, I only got 2x4TB IronWolf (non-Pro) drives. + +The final rig ended up being: + +CPU: i5-2400 (Second-hand)\ +CPU cooling: be quiet! Pure Rock 2 (Brand new)\ +Motherboard: MSI H61MA-E35(b3) (Second-hand)\ +RAM: 4x4GB DDR3 from my old "Celery Fujitsu" PC (Second-hand)\ +PSU: Corsair CV550 (Brand new)\ +Case: Krux Naos TG (Brand new)\ +HDD: 2x4TB Seagate IronWolf (Brand new)\ +Boot SSD: 2x120GB Patriot (Brand new) + +As of writing this, a few of these are still being shipped, but that didn't stop me from starting the experimentation, using my current PC as the test-bench. + +## The borgbackup +One simple Friday evening, as I had finished getting final parts of the NAS - I asked the matrix chat for suggestions regarding backup solutions I could use. +My criteria was simple - it must be able to do incremental backups and potentially deduplicate. I was thinking of some hacky rsync solution already until +Kerum stepped in with the idea of using [borgbackup](https://www.borgbackup.org) - I was intrigued, it offers space efficient storage of backups, LZ4 compression, +mountable backups with FUSE and claims to be easy to setup. + +Without wasting further time - I decided to take my 2x4TB drives out, attach them to my main PC, build a software RAID 1 and install borgbackup. +What I discovered was everything I could have asked for from a free solution and beyond. + +Let's start with the extras I wasn't expecting for -- the backups are all encrypted. If your HDDs get stolen for whatever reason, your backups are secure. +Further you are secure from malicious actors - you do NOT need borg on the remote site even, you do not need to store any passwords on the repository server. + +About performance - your initial pass is always going to be slower as borgbackup has to make note of blocks for deduplication and also encrypt the data. +However, this is why I wanted the ability to do incremental backups - you only have to move what you need. Your next passes however, will be a lot quicker - depending on the +amount of inodes in your server. For me, an incremental backup takes about ~ minutes presently. Here's a summary from the last backup I just took (presently manually, going full-automatic +once the NAS final components have shipped!). + +``` +Mon 15 May 2023 07:10:29 PM CEST Starting backup + +/path/to/.log: file changed while we backed it up.log +------------------------------------------------------------------------------ +Repository: ssh://@:/path/to/borg-repo +Archive name: cernodile-2023-05-15T19:10:29 +Archive fingerprint: 42cc287287f3c2f9d34308844ad3f18b15f53333d9eeb3e9b71ad1c89c33b063 +Time (start): Mon, 2023-05-15 19:10:30 +Time (end): Mon, 2023-05-15 19:16:53 +Duration: 6 minutes 22.94 seconds +Number of files: 741792 +Utilization of max. archive size: 0% +------------------------------------------------------------------------------ + Original size Compressed size Deduplicated size +This archive: 197.53 GB 149.67 GB 1.58 GB +All archives: 971.53 GB 754.30 GB 151.90 GB + + Unique chunks Total chunks +Chunk index: 530571 4076474 +------------------------------------------------------------------------------ +terminating with warning status, rc 1 + +Mon 15 May 2023 07:16:59 PM CEST Pruning repository + +Keeping archive (rule: daily #1): cernodile-2023-05-15T19:10:29 Mon, 2023-05-15 19:10:30 [42cc287287f3c2f9d34308844ad3f18b15f53333d9eeb3e9b71ad1c89c33b063] +Pruning archive (1/1): cernodile-2023-05-15T06:15:29 Mon, 2023-05-15 06:15:31 [4266d525a871b036cb71f0ba0f8930e1dcd04499fa5293deba87305497fe957d] +Keeping archive (rule: daily #2): cernodile-2023-05-14T01:08:46 Sun, 2023-05-14 01:08:48 [0dc46a3106d1df91170fb60d0661a1b6ca92fc50694acfa8833745dd302d1fd6] +Keeping archive (rule: daily #3): cernodile-2023-05-13T09:09:41 Sat, 2023-05-13 09:09:41 [f0be5704c565202b405ac833e1256fd320ce0968946bfabfd3312d3a1aa3afc2] +Keeping archive (rule: daily[oldest] #4): cernodile-2023-05-13T00:51:50 Sat, 2023-05-13 00:51:51 [14be5350fa55603c65e897c5a6f37925943b7c5eed793db386d5090464d6a18a] +terminating with success status, rc 0 + +Mon 15 May 2023 07:17:18 PM CEST Compacting repository + + +Mon 15 May 2023 07:17:34 PM CEST Backup, Prune, and/or Compact finished +``` + +I seem to face a visual bug regarding the warning status (no actual warning is output!), but other than that, I've had no real issues so far - I have verified integrity of the backups (each one!), all match up. + +Note the original and compressed sizes here. The original backed up data (aka actual FS usage) is 197 GB which gets compressed down to 149.67GB! With 3 other archives visible here, you can see that the incrementals have only added up about 3GB (which roughly aligns with the daily amount of data added too ~1GB/day). + +## FUSE the backups! +As mentioned before, borgbackup supports mounting your backups with FUSE provided you have the space for it. Let's say I accidentally make changes I didn't really intend to today and I didn't make a backup of it. +So I want to naturally take my nginx.conf back from the previous day. + +To do that, I go back to my PC terminal and check for my existing restore points with `borg list /path/to/repo`: +``` +$ borg list /path/to/repo: +Enter passphrase for key /path/to/repo: +cernodile-2023-05-13T00:51:50 Sat, 2023-05-13 01:51:51 [14be5350fa55603c65e897c5a6f37925943b7c5eed793db386d5090464d6a18a] +cernodile-2023-05-13T09:09:41 Sat, 2023-05-13 10:09:41 [f0be5704c565202b405ac833e1256fd320ce0968946bfabfd3312d3a1aa3afc2] +cernodile-2023-05-14T01:08:46 Sun, 2023-05-14 02:08:48 [0dc46a3106d1df91170fb60d0661a1b6ca92fc50694acfa8833745dd302d1fd6] +cernodile-2023-05-15T19:10:29 Mon, 2023-05-15 20:10:30 [42cc287287f3c2f9d34308844ad3f18b15f53333d9eeb3e9b71ad1c89c33b063] +``` + +As I said before, I want to see /etc/nginx from previous day, in this case, May 14th. To do that, I'll have to use `borg mount` as such: +``` +$ borg mount /path/to/repo/::cernodile-2023-05-14T01:08:46 /mnt/ /etc/nginx +Enter passphrase for key /path/to/repo: +$ cd /mnt/ +$ ls -lh etc/nginx/nginx.conf +-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.5K 26. apr 23:33 etc/nginx/nginx.conf +``` + +Voilah! We have retrieved the configuration file that was present that day! Now we can retrieve the contents of it using whichever preferred utility you wish or transport it directly +to the server with scp/ftp/sftp. +Once you're done, run `borg umount /mnt`. + +## Future concepts to look into +I want to see if it's possible to make my backups immutable in event of cernodile.com or based.quest being hacked. + +## Conclusion +Overall my first impressions so far are very positive, there is so much I haven't discovered yet with this backup solution and it is everything I could have asked for. +For my use case, this is ideal. The backup script I use is available in borgbackup's own documentation. I recommend you read up on that as well if you are as interested +in borgbackup as I am. + +I am glad to finally have my NAS and backup solution set up, it's been a long time coming. + +Thank you so much for reading, hopefully without this long of a delay next time, +- Cernodile diff --git a/layouts/partials/links.html b/layouts/partials/links.html index cdbf46d..7609e46 100644 --- a/layouts/partials/links.html +++ b/layouts/partials/links.html @@ -1,3 +1,3 @@

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Hall of Based: ReactOS, Matrix, PostmarketOS, Pine64, Landchad.net, based.cooking, borgbackup.

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