When and how you use these tools depends on your needs, but aligning your approach with standard ZFS practices ensures optimal data protection and system stability.
If your work is mission-critical and you cannot afford to lose even a day's worth of progress, adopting a daily snapshot strategy is highly recommended. Combining this with snapshot replication to remote storage enhances resilience by safeguarding against local hardware failures or disasters. For example, you can automate daily snapshots and send them to a remote system using tools like zfs send and zfs receive or specialized utilities such as znapzend or sanoid.
For regular users who may not produce as much critical data daily, a weekly snapshot schedule often strikes the right balance. Weekly snapshots provide ample recovery points without consuming excessive storage or requiring frequent management.
Casual users, who may use their systems primarily for light activities, should still consider creating backups before performing significant system changes, such as upgrades or configuration modifications. GhostBSD makes this particularly easy through its Backup Station, which includes an option to create a ZFS snapshot prior to updating. This feature provides a convenient and reliable safety net, allowing you to revert your system to its previous state should an update cause unexpected issues.
Regardless of your user type, it is essential to periodically clean up old snapshots to manage storage effectively. Combining snapshots with offsite backups, such as storing them on external drives or cloud storage, ensures robust disaster recovery capabilities while maintaining system flexibility.
