# Backup bhyve VM's to ext4 NAS



## hamzakc (Dec 21, 2022)

Hello.

I have freeBSD (13.1) installed on my small home server and am using it as a Virtual Machine Manager. I am using the excellent bhyve hypervisor to manage the VM's.  The server is running on the amazing zfs filesystem.  

I recently bought a NAS and want to backup all the bhyve-vms and their data using Rsync and Cron. I bought the cheapest Synology NAS which sadly only supports the ext4 filesystem. What is the recommended way to backup all the bhyve vm's to the NAS in a fault free way?

Thanks.
Kind Regards
Hamza


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## SirDice (Dec 21, 2022)

Snapshot them then create a file stream using zfs-send(8), you can store that file on whatever filesystem (except maybe FAT as that has a filesize limitation of 4GB).


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## covacat (Dec 21, 2022)

does it (the NAS) support iscsi ?


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## cracauer@ (Dec 21, 2022)

Backing up a plain files to ext4fs you lose the extended attributes of files, which are used for e.g. some FreeBSD system files. Insofar it is not ideal for restoring the whole OS back to a new VM. For access to your regular files it is convenient, though, as you can directly cherry-pick individual files from the backup.

You can also mix and match. As SirDice says, use zfs send to backup the system filesystems, use rsync to backup your own data.


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## hamzakc (Dec 23, 2022)

Thanks for the replies. 
I think having a mix and match setup is the way to go. Not that much of an issue as i don’t have that many vms currently.

covacat : Yes I think it does support iscsi. I have a Synology DS220j.

Hamza


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## covacat (Dec 23, 2022)

then you can use iscsi initiator on you freebsd box and use the nas 
then you can create a zfs pool with the nas exported disk and use zfs send receive
i do this and it works for backups (i even do it over internet but my daily backups are not very large)


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