Off-grid implications — backup and networking choices¶
Purpose¶
Connect solar + battery field reality to (1) where backups can run reliably and (2) how HaLow / mesh / WAN choices affect whether backups complete—without duplicating full power pages.
Canonical power: Off-grid power strategy — Demory farm site. Decision rules: Off-grid operational decision rules.
Backup scheduling vs energy¶
| Topic | On-grid homelab | Off-grid farm |
|---|---|---|
| Large restic jobs | Run nightly | Prefer high solar surplus window or genset policy—avoid deep SOC discharge for hours-long jobs unless budgeted |
| Longhorn backup to cloud | Depends on WAN | Same, plus WAN may be Starlink—degraded when weather hits—local target may be safer (restore tiers) |
| Edge gateway | Stable | Size battery for always-on backup agent or accept manual trigger |
Networking vs backup path¶
- HaLow / mesh local-only: backups can queue at gateway until WAN returns—design queue disk and retention explicitly.
- No WAN: Tier 2 logical dumps to removable media still work—tier 3 cloud restore does not.