Re: Backup/restore recipe

On 11/12/25 08:00, Eugene R wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Does anyone have any howtos/recipes for optimal backup and restore 
> strategies for a FreeBSD-based server? In particular, a "modern" ZFS 
> installation (pretty complex dataset tree) on a remote cloud system 
> accessible via SSH or console, with some external storage via smbfs or S3.
> 
> I suppose we will need
> - partition layout
> - ZFS layout
> - /boot directory
> - /etc directory (including passwd, fstab, etc)
> - filesystem contents (using tar.gz or whatever) and/or
> - ZFS data that can be restored directly
> 
> I imagine three potential scenarios:
> - selective restore of specific files or subtrees to a working FreeBSD 
> system (this one is reasonably obvious)
> - (essentially) exact duplicate of the original system state on the same 
> or different machine (ideally binary exact if hardware allows)
> - functionally equivalent duplicate (i.e., the same filesystem content 
> over the potentially different low-level layouts)
> In cases 2 and 3, we likely will have to start from a clean machine, 
> possibly with dummy Linux or FreeBSD installation.
> 
> I will be grateful for any pointers or explanations.
> 
> Best regards
> Eugene


I do not have any FreeBSD VPS's, but I do have a linode.com Debian 
GNU/Linux VPS running the UniFi controller.  I subscribe to the backup 
service, have done at least one restore (via the web control panel), and 
it works for my use-case:

https://techdocs.akamai.com/cloud-computing/docs/backup-service


I can see doing live file-level backup/restore of static (!) system 
configuration files and data over SSH, but "exact duplicate of the 
original system state" makes me think shutdown the VPS and either make a 
copy of the OS virtual disk file or export the VPS to file via some 
tool.  The latter require "outside" access to VPS -- e.g. web control 
panel, SSH, or API.


Does your cloud provider offer backup solution(s) that can meet your 
requirements?


David