This script will rsync to a remote host then take zfs snapshots. root permission on the destination host are assumed.
zfs snapshots are cloned to filsystems to be easly browsable.
Pruning in similar to Mac OSX TimeMachine (keep one hourly for the last 24 hours, one daily for the last 30 days, one weekly for backup older than 30 days).
ssh agent forwarding is reccomended.
Note: --inplace should generate smaller snapshots, but is not compatible with --hard-links (in general). Some also aruge that "--inplace" generates more fragmentation on copy-on-write filesystems.
zfs pool creation and optional encryption of devices is outside the scope of the present documentation.
cp config.default config
Edit config setting senible options
The default is backup up from /. If you want to be more specific you can create a file named sources.txt with the filesystem you want to back up.
Custom exclusion can be set in exclusions.txt (these are in addition to default-exclusions.txt)
I use this settings on my user:
zfs allow user clone,create,destroy,mount,snapshot fs
sysctl vfs.usermount=1 # necessary on FreeBSD