Bacula-users

Re: [Bacula-users] backing up Zimbra on-the-fly

2011-11-28 05:05:59
Subject: Re: [Bacula-users] backing up Zimbra on-the-fly
From: Marcus Hallberg <marcus AT wimlet DOT se>
To: Silver Salonen <silver AT serverock DOT ee>
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 10:45:50 +0100 (CET)
Hi!

I am a long time user of both Zimbra and bacula and I use bacula to backup logs 
and configuration from the Zimbraserver but uses Zimbras backup for email and 
accounts.

I have /opt/zimbra/backup nfsmounted from our backupserver and it works great.

For the amount of data that is being used for backups Zimbra changed there 
default configuration a while ago to zip all the backups which led to that it 
does not uses hardlinks in the backups any more so all fullbackups include 
everything. The hardlinks (nozip) option is still available if you look in the 
configuration options for the backup. 

http://www.zimbra.com/forums/installation/46919-upgrade-5-6-use-hardlinks-zcs-backups.html

I hope it helps a little.

/marcus 
-- 



/Marcus Hallberg 
Wimlet Consulting AB 
Gamla Varvsgatan 1 
414 59 Göteborg 
Tel: 031-3107000 
Direkt 031-3107010 
e-post: marcus AT wimlet DOT se 
hemsida: www.wimlet.se 

----- Ursprungligt meddelande -----
Från: "Silver Salonen" <silver AT serverock DOT ee>
Till: bacula-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net
Skickat: lördag, 26 nov 2011 22:09:27
Ämne: Re: [Bacula-users] backing up Zimbra on-the-fly

On Fri, 25 Nov 2011 13:08:40 -0500 (EST), Bill Arlofski wrote:
>> Hi.
>>
>> Is anyone backing up Zimbra on-the-fly? I don't think taking server
>> offline for pure file-based copy is a modern method of doing things.
>> Neither do I want to use zmbackup, because as I understand, that 
>> dumps
>> all the mailboxes (which are on disk anyway) to separate files which
>> would just waste so much space.
>
> Hi Silver... The "Network Edition" (eg: commercial/pay-for) version
> of Zimbra supports internal full and incremental backups that it does
> on-the-fly and automatically once configured.
>
> At our client sites, we use Bacula to backup the automatic Zimbra
> backups directory structure.
>
> It's a pretty reliable method of backing up Zimbra, and I have
> unfortunately had the experience of having to fully test process this
> when a client's Zimbra server lost 4 drives in a 6-drive RAID5 array
> at the same time. :(
>
> The good new though is that we were able to rebuild the Zimbra server
> (virtual this time), install the Zimbra software, restore Zimbra's
> automatic full and inc backups from our Bacula backup, and then
> re-import all Zimbra accounts/emails/calendars etc
>
> I think with the non-commercial "Community Edition" (assuming that is
> what you are using) you are best off running an live rsync of the
> /opt/zimbra directory structure, then shutdown Zimbra services
> (zmcontrol stop), run an offline rsync of the /opt/zimbra directory
> structure to the same place, restart Zimbra services (zmcontrol 
> start,
> THEN run a Bacula backup of the rsync'ed directory.
>
> On smaller sites using the non-commercial edition of Zimbra, we do
> those steps in a RunBefore script for the Zimbra job.
>
> Does this cost you a few minutes of Zimbra downtime each night?
> Yes, but only a few at most while the offline rsync runs.
>
> But if you are running the non-commercial version the benefit of this
> method is in your cost savings - IMHO.
>
> Hope this helps.

Thanks for the tips. I'm running the Network Edition, so I do have the 
backup possibility, but I'd prefer using Bacula, especially because I 
want to do backups to a remote server. Zimbra's backup scripts are meant 
storing backups locally, right? Also the backups take more-or-less the 
amount of space the data is.

As for the rsync-method, the downside of this is that it needs the same 
amount of disk-space for backup as for the data itself. This is what I 
meant by "non-modern" in the initial e-mail.

Anyway, would it suffice to make MySQL-dump, LDAP-dump and just backup 
the whole /opt/zimbra with Bacula from an LVM-snapshot or smth?

--
Silver

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contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, 
security threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this 
data and makes sense of it. IT sense. And common sense.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-novd2d
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