Following up on my last post, Netatalk on NexentaStor, I mentioned there that I only use Time Machine for “bare metal” type backups. As in if I need to restore something specific to the OS itself, or reload the OS in event of a hardware failure. I use CrashPlan for all my actual data backups, because I think it’s superior to Time Machine. For why I think that, check out the details. I’ve also had Time Machine crap out on me more than once when the disk gets full & tries to expire too much data, the only solution being to wipe the drive & start backups over. Not cool. Never had that problem with CrashPlan.
Crashplan is also the only backup solution I know of that is really cross-platform & allows free local backups. They support Windows, Mac, Linux, & Solaris, & state that FreeBSD support is coming. Can’t beat that. I will say though, this is not supported by Crashplan or NexentaStor. Installing it requires some workarounds because Nexenta uses apt as it’s underlying package management tool, whereas Crashplan is a pkg type installer. There are other ways to install it besides this one, but I like this one better because other ways I’ve read involve mixing the Crashplan Linux & Solaris installers. In reality, that may be just fine since Crashplan is mostly a java app, but still… I want 100% Solaris if I can get it. So this install is a two step process, & takes a little longer. It involves setting up an OpenIndiana VM, installing Crashplan to that, then copying the files over to NexentaStor. Simple enough, right? I’m assuming you have working OpenIndiana & NexentaStor instances & that you can ssh between each as root. To install Crashplan on OpenIndiana, it’s pretty straightforward:
- Make sure it has java installed:
pkg install jdk - Download the Solaris installer from Crashplan.com & untar to /tmp
- Install it:
cd /tmp && pkgadd -d . - The install process shows you everything you need to know, but in case you didn’t copy it down:
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Notice the last step details how to import Crashplan’s SMF manifest, so you can manage the service in true Solaris form. You don’t have to do that on OpenIndiana, but no harm in doing so at this point. Now we want to get all that stuff over to NexentaStor, so as root:
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README VERY IMPORTANT: this assumes there is no /opt/sfw on your NexentaStor install already!! It’s a pretty safe bet as NexentaStor doesn’t install anything there, but please make sure yourself. Also replace “nexentastor” with the name of your NexentaStor server, or it’s IP. Enter the root password & it’ll do it’s thing. You should see each item it copies print out to the screen:
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Make sure java is installed on NexentaStor:
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Lastly, run the two commands the install script shows you on NexentaStor as root:
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Keep in mind you have to be in a pure root bash shell, not NMC, to do this on NexentaStor. Now verify it’s running:
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Good! All that’s left is to configure it. Crashplan has instructions on their site: Configure a Headless Client. The last step is to create a ZFS folder for Crashplan to store it’s backups in. This is easy enough in NexentaStor, just create a folder on the ZFS pool you want & set it up accordingly. I have mine set to use compression, but that’s it. Crashplan does deduplication & more compression itself, so I figure that’s plenty.
I vaguely recall having some problems getting Crashplan to see the /volumes directory where NexentaStor mounts it’s pools & folders. What I had to do was to disable Crashplan, go into /opt/sfw/crashplan/conf, & edit I think the my.service.xml file to include the location manually. My memory’s fuzzy on that, & I found the solution by Googling so I’d recommend doing that if you get stuck with the same problem. It’d be pretty cool to see NexentaStor create a plugin for Crashplan, where the installation would be as simple as a click & it would be managed by NMV. Wouldn’t take much, I don’t think. Maybe in v4. ;)