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.