Sanoid Snapshot Policy

Sanoid manages automatic snapshot creation and pruning on zpool0. Datasets are tiered by how irreplaceable the data is.

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Retention Templates

Template	Daily	Weekly	Monthly	Yearly
critical	14	8	12	3
important	7	4	6	0
minimal	3	2	1	0
pve_backup	3	2	0	0

All templates have autosnap = yes and autoprune = yes. No hourly or sub-hourly snapshots anywhere.

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Backup Drive Retention (backup-local / backup-offsite)

Sanoid also runs against the backup drives to prune old replicated snapshots. autosnap = no — sanoid does not create snapshots here, only prunes what syncoid has replicated.

Template	Daily	Weekly	Monthly	Yearly
backup_local	7	4	6	1
backup_offsite	3	2	3	1

backup-local retains more history — it's the larger disk (5TB vs 4TB) and the primary recovery target since it's at home and the first thing to grab if things go south. backup-offsite retains less as it's the secondary copy.

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Datasets by Tier

Critical — Irreplaceable data

14 daily / 8 weekly / 12 monthly / 3 yearly

Dataset	Notes
zpool0/family/photos	Recursive
zpool0/family/videos	Recursive
zpool0/family/kids	Recursive
zpool0/family/appdata/paperless	Data and media subdatasets only
zpool0/family/archive/emails	Recursive
zpool0/vault	Recursive — all vault children

Important — Valuable but stable

7 daily / 4 weekly / 6 monthly

Dataset	Notes
zpool0/family/documents	Recursive
zpool0/family/appdata	Key service app data subdatasets
zpool0/media/music/flac	Lossless — irreplaceable in practice

Minimal — Low priority or replaceable

3 daily / 2 weekly / 1 monthly

Dataset	Notes
zpool0/family/shared	Recursive
zpool0/family/appdata	Base dataset (config files only)
zpool0/media/music	Base dataset + transcoded copies
zpool0/pve-backup	Both nodes

Excluded — No snapshots

Dataset	Reason
zpool0/family/backups	Already backups — redundant to snapshot
zpool0/media (except music)	Replaceable media — can be re-acquired
Paperless temporary dirs	Consume queue, exports, trash