Have setup TrueNAS Scale 25.04.2.1 to backup with TrueCloud Backup Tasks = Storji.
As options I have “Keep last: 2”, and no snapshots.
(Not the Cloud Sync Task option, but the real Backup Task option).
The backup-folder used in TrueNAS have not changed at all or in size this week - no new files. After running the backup everyday for testing, I log in on Storji to view my account.
The “Storage” used is constant i.e. 2.33TB, but the “Download” used does increase with 1-1.5GB after every backup.
No problems, incredibly fast backup - maxing out my 500/500 fiber, and also when testing restore. As I understand the Storji pricing, uploading have no costs other than storage size, but downloading will cause a further cost.
Does this mean that every time I run the TrueCloud Backup-Task from TrueNAS it will cost money - even when there is nothing new to backup?
This “download” from Storji is probably reading all file-names in the Storji-bucket-folder to check for differences before TrueCloud can back-up?
I have found that changing transfer setting to “fast storage” will change pack-size from 16MB to 58MB, so segments will get closer to the maximum 64MB. But that probably will only effect cost when downloading for a restore.
It will also affect cost: larger segments —> fewer objects → cheaper to store (see per segment fee). But on the other hand, larger segment sizes may impact deduplication efficiency. What will be better will depend on kind of data you store and how fast it changes.
I’m using duplicacy for backup (similar to restic) and I too cranked up average chunk size from default 4MB to 32MB.
I’m using the Truenas Truecloud (StorJ) backup. Be careful. There is an issue in the task setup where there is an option to make a snapshot first (use Snapshot under advanced) which is to be temporairy and deleted after the backup completes. It even says so in the current 25.02 docs
Select Use Snapshot to create and use a snapshot to back up or synchronize the operation between TrueNAS and the TrueCloud backup solution. This snapshot is automatically removed after the operation completes.
This is not true. While it was intended to make a snapshot of the data, make the backup and then remove the temp. snapshot, it does not work correctly. It will make a new snapshot every time the task is run and upload the new snapshot to the tasks snapshot directory on the StorJ bucket. It also does not respect the “keep last” setting in the setup. So if you were to make a task setup of keep last 3 backups and also have the “use snapshot” checked you will wind up with a snapshot for each time the backup has run. If it runs daily for 2 months then you will have 2 months of snapshots. Not the retain last 3 backups you intended when the task was setup.
Some like me have just recently discovered this issue and are now incurring download charges trying to remove and purge the unwanted snapshots.
The solution is to not check “Use Snapshot” when setting up a task.
Sorry for the delay. I’ll get you some more info a bit later today if needed.
It looks like the interaction with TrueCloud on Truenas ans StorJ buckets does not work correctly and when deleting a snapshot from The Truecloud task It appears to download the entire snapshot index and data associated with the snapshot as it takes forever and my download usage in the bucket climbs which in turn increases my storage cost. Most of my 10 backup tasks I discovered have 49 snapshots associated with each backup task that were uploaded to StorJ from Truecloud when it did not respect the keep 2 parameter. This was when the Use Snapshot check box is checked in the TrueNas TrueCloud backup task creation. This is what others also reported on the Truenas Community Forums as they also discovered the issue about the same time as I did.
I also tried a command line command (below) which helps some.
I’m not complaining about the cost. It is my fault I did not pay closer attention to tasks I thout were running smoothly and correctly. I just want people to be aware there is an issue with TrueCloud as currently implemented in Truenas and they might be in for a supprise.
Reading some in the restic docs ( I think it was) I discovered that with the current Truenas TrueCloud setup, I found that if I used the TrueCloud setup to rename a save path (the target folder) in the storj bucket, it would create a new target folder. Once done running the tasks again, I deleted the older entire folders using the storJ dashboard which eliminated the issue of TrueCloud downloading a bunch of stuff for each snapshot.
This turned out to be a better and much faster solution than anything I had tried before and did not incur any download fees.
But I imagine the 1,5gb data download compared to the 2,5TB storage cost is insignificant?
