My server uses zfs, which allows me to create regular snapshots with sanoid. This makes it extremly easy to quickly recover individual services or vms without consuming a lot of disk space. In case the server is not recoverable, I still send the incremental snapshots to a pi clone with a large hard drive. If you use the native disk encryption, the snapshot can be sent encrypted without the second server having access to the data.This solution with zfs and sanoid/syncoid has often made my life easier and, in my experience, uses less bandwidth and cpu load.

The files are stored in a directory and you can define the default path with an environment variable ( file-name-handling ). If you need a more fine graint solution you can also use storage paths and select it on file level ( storage-paths ). I’m using syncthing to sync the folder structure to my other devices.