I have an old Mac mini 2018 that I no longer need and am planning on repurposing as a remote offsite backup system for myself. I was hoping I could get some critiques on the robustness and security of my plan.
My source computer is a Mac mini M4. The destination computer, the Mac mini 2018, will live at a relative’s house hardlined into their router. Both computers will run Tailscale VPN with tailnet lock enabled. The destination computer will have an 8TB hard drive plugged into it to use for storage of the backups. The hard drive will be encrypted through Disk Utility.
My main purpose for the remote backup is to prevent against theft and fire/disaster at my home. The source computer already has a local Time Machine backup connected to it which takes care of my versioning and general backup needs. I don’t think I need any versioning or snapshots on the destination computer since it will just be a failsafe for my data in case of total loss at my home. I’ll use ChronoSync on the source computer to sync my main drive plus two external drives to the destination computer.
As far as security goes, I have a few questions:
-Since ChronoSync doesn’t encrypt the data on the drive, is it necessary to keep the 8TB hard drive ejected when I’m not doing a backup?
-Should I have a firewall on both computers?
-Should I have FileVault turned on?