I’d like to know if it’s feasible to (through Rockons, or naively) use Rockstor as a Backup Appliance for a (Server 2012R2) Windows File Server. Is there any way to have all files mirrored from the Windows file server to the Rockstor with multiple versions of files and permissions intact, so that an admin could restore files as needed?
(we have a traditional D2D2T backup in place, but we’d like another layer. The 1st Rockstor would then sync to a 2nd Rockstor off-site, if possible.
Thanks!
Welcome to the Rockstor community @gbcon!
You’ve brought up an interesting use case. Say, for example, you need to backup only one Folder. You’d create a Share on Rockstor and export it via Samba. Then, mount the Share on Windows File Server and backup the Folder to the the mounted location. You can perhaps use Windows server backup tool for this.
Samba and hence Rockstor, supports Windows ACLs, so you should be able to configure it to keep permissions in tact.
To keep and access multiple versions of files, you can schedule Snapshots on Rockstor for the Share. Snapshots work well with Samba and let you access other versions of files from Windows and restore as needed.
Finally, Rockstor to Rockstor sync is possibly via Replication feature. So in summary, what you want to achieve is possibly with Rockstor. There are some bug fixes in works for Replication which should be available soon.
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i assume you use an AD-Domain, so adding the Rockstor (SMB) to it and using robocopy or any other tool that preserves windows acl should suffice
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Thanks for the reply. I was thinking of using either robocopy, or something like https://www.bvckup2.com/
I was also looking at the Syncthing rockon. The file server I’m backing up is 4TB of old, static data, and about 50-100GB of current/slow churning data. Maybe 10GB of change a day, tops.