I currently have two computers, one that has a big zfs raidz pool that I currently back everything up to. Right now, on my local computer I use rsnapshot to do snapshot backups via rsync to the remote zfs pool. I know I’m wasting a ton of space because I have snapshotting in the rsync backup, and then the zfs pool is snapshotted every day.
Does it make sense to just do a regular rsync into a backup directory on the zfs pool and then just rely on the zfs pool snapshotting for snapshotting?
Maybe eventually I will put the local machine on zfs and then just send the local zfs snapshots over, but that will take some time. Thanks!
Don’t use filesystem snapshots as backup. They’re a safety measure against accidental deletion or casual modifications but they’re not backups.
If you want backups then use a proper, dedicated solution like Borg Backup. It connects remotely, takes care of deduplication, compression, encryption etc. and you can fully verify the backups and manage them individually.
This is the right answer. A better backup strategy is an actual backup strategy. Snapshots, drive mirroring, rsync copies, etc aren’t really backups.