Re: restoring

[Rich Graves <rgraves@carleton.edu>]

>> 1) Keep /opt/zimbra on a SAN with daily read/write snapshots (we use Compellent
> 
> How do keep your filesystem consistent then?  Is there integration with
> Zimbra?

No. The snapshot looks as if the power has been pulled. The ext3fs journal and Zimbra's redo logs (which are very nice) will be replayed.

There is some theoretical risk of corruption, but it's small, and good enough for this purpose and (very usefully) for practicing Zimbra customizations and upgrades with a recent copy of real user mail.

We are still doing Zimbra's disk-to-disk backup. But sometimes, especially for accounts with several gigabytes of mail, it's faster and easier to boot up an existing "live" SAN snapshot than to run zmrestore.

Immediately before ZCS upgrades, I do zmbackup -i -a all, then unmount /opt/zimbra, then take a SAN snapshot while completely idle. I've never had to revert a failed upgrade, but this would allow me to do so.

Btw, my /opt/zimbra/backup is on a separate SAN 5km away from the rest of /opt/zimbra. I don't see a need to copy /opt/zimbra/backup again with traditional backup software. Yes, in theory, a rogue sysadmin or external attacker could corrupt both /opt/zimbra/store and /opt/zimbra/backup, in which case an append-only tape or WORM disk backup would be nice, but I consider the risk small, and managed. A vandal would need also need to destroy our SAN snapshots... theoretically possible, but it's also theoretically possible to vandalize backup tapes.
-- 
Rich Graves http://claimid.com/rcgraves
Carleton.edu Sr UNIX and Security Admin
CMC135: 507-222-7079 Cell: 952-292-6529