Backing up zimbra

[reggiep]

I have touched on this briefly in another post BUT I need to clarify it a bit.
How do you back up zimbra?
Bear in mind that I don't know how to back up anything from a linux/ubuntu box!
I have had a squint at a couple of articles in the zimbra forums but wondered if anyone could give me some pointers?

Thanks

[Geoff]

Opensource or Comercial Edition?

[reggiep]

Open source!

[webman]

For a complete disaster-recovery option, a common method is to stop the Zimbra services, copy the entire /opt/zimbra directory to somewhere safe, and restart the services again. Restoring is just a matter of putting back the zimbra directory and resetting permissions. This is the script that I put together for the very purpose. It duplicates the directory, compresses it, and copies it to a remote NFS location.

Open Source Edition Backup Procedure - Zimbra :: Wiki

If you wanted per-mailbox backup, from what I read I think it would be possible to develop a script that uses the REST interface to fetch a Zip file of each user's inbox.

[reggiep]

Thanks webman,
I have very little understanding of linux so this is a great help.
I'll have a play with the script now.

[reggiep]

@Webman.
Can I ask about part of the script...

NFSHOST="bbs-nas-001"
NFSPATH="/mnt/vol1/backups/bbs-zcs-001"
NFSMOUNT="/mnt/bbs-nas-001"

I'm not sure how this bit works!

My server is ed-prenton-cs01 which I can see would need to go into the first line.
It's the next two lines I'm not sure about.
Do I need to create a share called backups on that server?

[webman]

The NFS... lines are the details of the remote backup server that is running NFS (just like Samba or FTP).

NFSHOST - hostname of the backup server
NFSPATH - path of the backup directory on the backup server
NFSMOUNT - local mountpoint on the zimbra server at which to mount the NFS server

The script itself handles the mounting and unmounting.

(Our zimbra server is bbs-zcs-001, backup server is bbs-nas-001)

[dhicks]

For a complete disaster-recovery option, a common method is to stop the Zimbra services, copy the entire /opt/zimbra directory to somewhere safe, and restart the services again.

If your server's not in production yet, you might want to set up your data store using LVM instead of just a plain disk. That way you can do snapshots of disks, so you don't have to stop and restart services.

--
David Hicks

[webman]

If your server's not in production yet, you might want to set up your data store using LVM instead of just a plain disk. That way you can do snapshots of disks, so you don't have to stop and restart services.

I agree - definitely a good idea - reading up on LVM will be worth it. I just didn't have the time or the skill to do LVM at the time.

[DMcCoy]

If your server's not in production yet, you might want to set up your data store using LVM instead of just a plain disk. That way you can do snapshots of disks, so you don't have to stop and restart services.

--
David Hicks

I think you do have to stop the services, but only long enough to start the snapshot, means it's not much more than a restart and only takes a couple of minutes.

Live backup needs the commercial version

[reggiep]

@Webman.
All the script runs fine with adjustments for my servers BUT my NFSknowledge is letting it down

I have set up nfs on a ,mac server as we have a 4TB drive sat doing nothing and thought that would be ideal for the back ups.

Can I put my error here for some help?

Thanks

[Geoff]

Rsync is another option if you don't happen to have an NFS server.

[webman]

Can I put my error here for some help?

Yep, fire away

[dhicks]

I think you do have to stop the services, but only long enough to start the snapshot, means it's not much more than a restart and only takes a couple of minutes. Live backup needs the commercial version

Does Zimbra do something especially cunning or fancy with disks, then? Shurley the whole point of LVM is that LVM-managed volumes look just like any other block devices, the applications using them shouldn't be able to tell the difference. Does starting a snapshot make some noticable change to a block device? Wouldn't the block device just maybe take a couple of seconds to return from a read/write operation if it were right in the middle of setting up a snapshot?

--
David Hicks

[reggiep]

@Webman
I have NFS running on my mac server, as far as I can tell. I used a third party application to set it up and if I browse to /etc/exports I can see that the nfs folder is set up in there?

Anyway all the script runs fine until I get to the following...
root@email:/tmp/zcsbackup#
root@email:/tmp/zcsbackup# mkdir $NFSMOUNT
root@email:/tmp/zcsbackup# mount -t nfs $NFSHOST:/$NFSPATH $NFSMOUNT
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on 10.60.28.53://Volumes/Promise/zimbra,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
(for several filesystems (e.g. nfs, cifs) you might
need a /sbin/mount.<type> helper program)
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so
Like I said before I'm new to NFS so it could be somthing really simple that I have cocked up!

@Geoff
Rsync? please do tell, I am really a lightweight when it comes to linux and mac, which is unfortunate with us having an expensive mac server setup staring at me out of the server cab.