zrepl on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

zrepl is an open source ZFS snapshot management and replication daemon. It takes automatic, periodic snapshots of your ZFS datasets and replicates them between datasets and between machines with configurable pruning on both the sending and receiving side, giving you dependable, filesystem level backups and disaster recovery for ZFS. This cloudimg image runs zrepl 0.7.0 from the official release binary on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS as a hardened systemd service.

zrepl is driven entirely by one plain text file, /etc/zrepl/zrepl.yml, so you describe the backup and replication policy you want rather than scripting zfs send and zfs receive by hand. Jobs describe which datasets to snapshot, how often, how to replicate them, and how to prune old snapshots. There is no database and no web console, so your policy lives in version controllable text and applies with a single systemctl restart. zrepl exposes Prometheus metrics on loopback port 9811 for monitoring replication health.

The image is functional out of the box. Because a fresh virtual machine has no spare block device, first boot creates a small file backed demo ZFS pool called tank with a source dataset and a sink dataset, and configures a self contained local push job so you can watch a real snapshot, replicate and prune cycle on a single node immediately, then adapt it to your own datasets and remote sinks. zrepl's local transport needs no keys or passwords, so this image ships no shared or default credential of any kind; when you later replicate between machines you add your own TLS or SSH transport.

zrepl is distributed under the MIT License, free and open source with no per CPU or per deployment fee. cloudimg is not affiliated with or endorsed by the zrepl project; zrepl is a mark of its owner. cloudimg provides packaging, the secure by default configuration, per instance demo pool automation, security patching, and 24/7 support with a guaranteed 24 hour response SLA.