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jimsalterjrs
sanoid
Perl2015–2026
jimsalterjrs / sanoid

sanoid

These are policy-driven snapshot management and replication tools which use OpenZFS for underlying next-gen storage. (Btrfs support plans are shelved unless and until btrfs becomes reliable.)

Systems & Infrastructure
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
17Distinct people
19Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
3.9KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

These are policy-driven snapshot management and replication tools which use OpenZFS for underlying next-gen storage. (Btrfs support plans are shelved unless and until btrfs becomes reliable.)

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year19 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2015-06-10 09:45:00 UTC to 2026-09-17 05:19:44 UTC.

012342015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments20152016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202

What Hacker News says

19 sources
Helmut10001·Sep 28, 2024
ZFS Offsite Backup configured using Syncoid [1] in pull mode. My backup server is started weekly using a pre-configured Shelly Plug. After boot, it connects to the main server, pulls latest ZFS Snapshots, does a ZFS scrub, sends an email for confirmation to me, and shuts down. The Shelly Plug-S is configured in a Home Assistant automation to shut off power completely if under 10W for 10 Minutes. The advantage of this setup is that the Backup server does not need to know the encryption keys for ZFS. It can pull snapshots without knowing keys (i.e. zero trust). The main server also cannot reach the Backup server, only the other way around works (configured in opnsense that connects my offsite backup via IPSEC). The backup server is locked down in its own subnet and can only be reached from a few selected points. This is possible because the
Read the rest
re is no interaction needed due to the Shelly Plug S self-starting automation. ZFS also doesn't care about filesystems (etc.) - it can incrementally pull ext4/xfs filesystems of VMs, without touching individual files or the need for individual file hashes (such as with rsync). [1]: https://github.com/jimsalterjrs/sanoid/blob/master/syncoid
In Ask HN: What do you use to backup your VMs?
Modified3019·Sep 5, 2023
Outside of it being a good idea to manually set `ashift=12` on each vdev creation (because disks lie and zfs’s whitelist isn’t omniscient. I’ve seen too many people burned by this) and `atime=off` for datasets (because burning IO updating the metadata because you’ve accessed something is just fucking stupid), the defaults are sane and you can basically refuse to care about them after that. Every system I’ve used has `compression=on` set as default, which currently means lz4. People set it manually out of paranoia from earlier days I think. For linux systems you can set `xattr=sa` and `acltype=posixacl` if you like, which offers a minor optimization that you’ll never notice. I suppose if you don’t like how much memory zfs uses for ARC, you can reduce it. For desktop use 2-4gb is plenty. For actual active heavier storage use like working wi
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th big files or via a slow HDD filled NAS, 8GB+ is a better amount. Dataset recordsize can be set as well, but that’s really something for nerds like me that have huge static archives (set to 1-4MiB) or virtual machines (match with qcow2’s 64KiB cluster size). The default recordsize works well enough for everything that unless you have a particular concern, you don’t need to care. I should note, beware of rolling release linux distros and ZFS. The linux kernel breaks compatibility nonstop, and sometimes it can take a while for zfs to catch up. This means your distro can update to a new kernel version, and suddenly you can’t load your filesystem. ZFSbootmenu is probably the best way to navigate that, it makes rolling back easy. You also want to setup automatic snapshots, snapshot pruning, and sending of snapshots to a backup machine. Highly recommend https://github.com/jimsalterjrs/sanoid If you really find yourself wanting to gracefully deal with rollbacks and differences in a project, HotTubTimeMachine (HTTM) is nice to be aware of: https://github.com/kimono-koans/httm
In ZFS for Dummies
marceldegraaf·Feb 4, 2022
Aside from the usual cronjobs to scrub my local and backup pools, I do a few extra things: I'm using https://habilis.net/cronic/ to make sure I don't mess up the email notification part of the cronjob. It's a simple wrapper script that sends an email in a readable format if a cronjob fails. I use Sanoid to create snapshots on my home server, and use Syncoid to push those to a cloud VPS with a beefy network drive as an off-site backup. Both tools are available here: https://github.com/jimsalterjrs/sanoid The free tier of https://cronitor.io/ makes sure I'm alerted if a cronjob fails, or fails to run on time. Especially that last bit is interesting: that way I'm sure cronjobs aren't silently failing for days/weeks on end. I have 4 monitors set up in Cronitor: snapshot creation, zpool status on the local and backup machine, and send/receive
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with Syncoid. This is how that looks on the Cronitor dashboard: https://img.marceldegraaf.net/v6IpNAyxrZ54vgLqIJpY Let me know if you want more info or examples, happy to share whatever I can to help :-) EDIT: feel free to reach out via email as well, my address is in my profile.
In Why Not ZFS (2021)

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