[OpenIndiana-discuss] Sending our zpool offsite using encrypted USB HDDs

[Edward Ned Harvey (openindiana)]

> From: Thorsten Heit [mailto:thorsten.heit at vkb.de]
> 
> # zfs send fs at snapshot | bzip2 -z -c | gpg -c --cipher-algo AES
> --digest-algo SHA512 > /media/usb/stream.gpg

Based on performance characteristics, I would never recommend bzip2 for anything.  For most situations like this, fast compression would be more desirable (lzop is fastest, gzip --fast is second fastest) ... bzip2 will both take longer and get less compression than xz --fast.

Better yet, as I mentioned in another message moments ago, you really want to zfs receive on the destination disk.  You can simply enable the compression property on the receiving filesystem (and probably you want to set sync=disabled on the backup destination too).  By default, zfs compression uses something that is similar to lzo (lzop) but if you wanted, you could make it use zlib (gzip) by setting the compression property to the desired compressor explicitly.  I don't think you'll benefit by doing so.

I think the best solution for this situation is simply to set compression=on (and sync=disabled) on the receiving zfs filesystem.