Snapshot Retention Policy Issues

OpenZFS TrueNAS
1

Hi All,

I am seeking some help in understanding snapshot retention policies, I am clearly missing something.

I am using sanoid to create daily as well as monthly snapshots. I have also configured my TrueNAS backup server to pull these snapshots daily.

I was looking to configure a snapshot retention policy on TrueNAS as follows:
Keep daily for 365 days
Keep monthly for 84 months (for tax purposes)

I thought the way this should be done by creating two separate Replication Tasks in TrueNAS.

  1. Use the option to “include snapshots matching naming schema” with “autosnap_%Y-%m-%d_%H:%M:%S_daily” with a “snapshot lifetime” of 365 days to /pool/filing

  2. Use the option to “include snapshots matching naming schema” with “autosnap_%Y-%m-%d_%H:%M:%S_monthly” with a “snapshot lifetime” of 84 months to /pool/filing

When the second job in the order runs I get the error “No incremental base on dataset ‘pool/Filing’ and replication from scratch is not allowed.”

I assume this occurs because the second job has a snapshot prior to the current latest snapshot and cannot inject it back in time.

Is my understanding correct?
If that is the case, how should I be configuring this?

Thanks,

Adam

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Update

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Appears this is not possible with TrueNAS. See a feature request here: Set different retention times for each snapshot task within replication task - #2 by etorix - Feature Requests - TrueNAS Community Forums

Is this the reason why I have seen posts here about people wanting to install sanoid n TrueNAS?

If so, I assume the most logical approach here is to configure my replication tasks with a retention policy of snapshot retention policy of none and then use sanoid for that task. I figure that way I am making use of the WUI given I would likely be otherwise managing the server via the WUI.

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