[Replication] change appliance IP address

Hello,

Here is my small intro: I am building a replication box with Rockstor 4 that I plan to host it off site. My current server on site is using Rockstor 3.9 (I plan to upgrade once v4 is “stable” :slight_smile:). The connection between the two servers will be through Wireguard. My setup is kind of a hybrid site-2-site VPN using Wireguard, so long story short, I must use wg client directly on my replication box but my main server is behind a router. I can provide more info about this if needed.

What I would like to achieve is replicate my shares of about 2TB locally, not going through Wireguard, then continue the incremental snapshots through the VPN.

My question, since the configuration of a replication service is dependent of the network interface and the replication task is bound to the IP + ID of the distant appliance, is there any way to change the IP address and interface name for a configured replication task?

After some initial tests, I am getting server error 500.
I know my way using BTRFS commands, but I would like to achieve this using Rockstor for convenience.

I am open to any idea you might have :slight_smile:

Thanks a lot!

@G_Man_be Hello again.
I can pop in on this one:

if this version is 3.9.1-16 then replication is broken, it was later fixed in the Stable release. But if it’s 3.9.1-0 I’m pretty sure it did work back then. But that’s a long way back (years) and much as been fixed all over since then.

So exact version numbers via:

yum info rockstor

should help to at least rule that one out.

As for the wireguard I’m afraid I’ve not experience but there are a few here on the forum who are way more up on networking than myself so hopefully they can chip in.

Hope that helps.

1 Like

@phillxnet, thanks for the interest.

My server on site is version 3.9.2-57, actually I have no issue with the replication itself. I managed to make it work once using my local ip range and once using my wireguard ip.

The problem is after I create the replication task with my local ip, and I want to change it, I must remove the configured distant appliance and recreate it with the new ip. After doing this, the task will fail because it cannot validate the ip.
Here is an error:
DoesNotExist: Snapshot matching query does not exist.

Maybe there is a manual way to run the first “btrfs send” then create the task?
Let me know if I need to better explain :slight_smile:

@G_Man_be Re:

It’s a little more involved unfortunately as there are tasks and db entries setup so it may be that, at least for now, an alternative backup / replication setup would fit your needs better. Btrfs send depends on taking a read only snapshot and then sending that snapshot. Once then takes another snapshot and sends the difference between the first and second … and so on. And all in the stable state of Rockstor is 3 snapshots on both sender and receiver and the oldest snapshot is then deleted on each as they in turn achieve a successful replication. We do have some robustness issues to attend to and did in fact have a slightly better setup once before but then an API change in pools forced a partial implementation and we lost some robustness. But as you say you have had some success.

Essentially the current setup is not robust to IP change or a failed replication. But in the latter case one can usually just remove the last sender snapshot of the 3 and the next replication event will work as normal. See the following issue we have open for this failure point:

Not quite your issue but related.

It takes around 5 replication events to achieve the stable state I think. I’ve got some notes on this when I last worked in this area so will do a tecnical wiki to help anyone wishing to contribute to the code in this area. Unfortunately I’ll not have much time for this for a while, at least until we get our re-release out via the newer 4 variant.

Hope that helps at least with a little context.

As for alternatives maybe some folks to chip in but the following has some btrfs based alternatives:
https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Incremental_Backup
Hope that helps.

1 Like

I am wondering whether the IP/location change can be made more easily using a script like this:

since it utilizes a configuration file, maybe you just need to change the ssh target (or fake the local one) …

1 Like