Disaster Recovery

We're just trying-out OMV to replace an ancient UnRAID box. Disaster-recover is at the top of the list of must-haves.

Imagine my house burns down and the only things I manage to save are my three data (RAID5) disks from my OpenMediaVault and a copy of /etc/openmediavault/config.xml. No other hardware, not even the OMV system-disk nor any backups of it, survive.

Will it be possible to put my three data-disks into new hardware (which may be different to the old hardware) add a new system disk, install a new copy of OMV, configure it appropriately, and so rebuild my OMV without data loss? If so, could anyone offer a few pointers to get me started, please?

Thanks for the response.

We envisage setting our OMV(s) up as a simple vanilla NAS. We'll configure with a couple of shares, then never change the config ever again. So...

...would a Clonezilla copy of the system disk made today be sufficient to restore the OMV at any time in the future, so long as all we ever do in the meantime is write and/or delete data: with no alterations to filesystem/shares/users?

If that's the case we'll simply buy a spare system disk, clone it, and stash in the fire-safe.

Thanks you Sounds like we have the start of a restore plan.

Now... our final big worry... what happens if I swap the MB for something different to the original? If I do that, the disks will (possibly) end up in some random order (like /dev/sda becomes /dev/sdd/, etc.) Would OMV cope seamlessly (fantastic), or (second-best) would I have to reconfigure in software, or (not so good) is the only way to make it work to ensure they're all on the same devices as before?

Thank Rycoaaron and Gderf.

We'll clone the boot-drive and dump some test data on. As a recovery-test we'll scramble the SATA leads in the (not necessarily valid) expectation that this will mix up the device order, pop in the clone, and see if it comes up sane. Sounds like it should.

For any other OMV noob who comes across this thread in future and who wants a bullet-proof keep-it-simple-stoopid way to backup their OMV system disk:

• Cloning the system disk - as recommended in this thread and elsewhere in the forum by others - appears to work fine although we haven't tried restoring a months-old image. Yet. (BTW 'Clonezilla' worked perfectly for us, but the now-ancient 'Redo' produced a clone which wouldn't boot. Guessing MBR/GPT issues but am no expert.)
• Many OMVs won't have an optical drive. TuxBoot etc easily makes a Clonezilla USB. But enabling persistence caused USB creation to fail - so turn off that option.
• If - like us - you have multiple NASs then the obvious thing to do is backup OMV1's system disk onto OMV2 and vice-versa. And the easiest way to restore is to bung in a new system disk and restore the backup onto it. We have tested this on a simple home-office network using SMB shares.
• If you have only one NAS, then format a 32GB+ USB stick with 5GB/27GB+ FAT32 partitions, install CloneZilla on the small (first) partition. This allows the system disk to be backed-up to the 27GB+ partition. That way, backup/restore doesn't even need a network connection. We have tested this with a Kingston Data Traveler DT106 32GB.
• All of this assumes that you don't often change your config and that your OMV isn't headless and that it doesn't need to be up 24/7. Otherwise running Clonezilla becomes a PITA and you should seek a more sophisticated solution.

( And, yes, changing the plug-order of the storage HDDs had no effect on the system.)

Thanks to the helpers on this thread and thanks for all the other info posted on this forum. Invaluable