Re: Question about backing up Zimbra

[Freddie Cash <fjwcash@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 8:44 AM, Charles Lacroix
<clacroix@cegep-ste-foy.qc.ca> wrote:
> I would like to know how you backup your zimbra infrastructure and how often
> do you take snapshots of mailboxes.
>
> I do 3 things:
>  * Backup of the ldap database daily.
>  * rsync /opt/zimbra on all servers ( --exclude 'store/' --exclude 'db/'
> --exclude 'index/' )
>  * Backup every account with the following :
>
> ###
> /opt/zimbra/bin/zmmailbox -z -m $USERNAME gms >> $LOGFILE
> /opt/zimbra/bin/zmmailbox -z -m $USERNAME getRestURL "//?fmt=tgz" >
> /backup/$USERNAME.tgz
> /bin/chmod 644 /backup/$USERNAME.tgz
> ###

I'm guessing you are running the open-source edition, since the
network edition includes backup services?

We use the included backup services to create a full backup on the
weekend, and incremental backups through the week, and then rsync all
of that off to our backups server (FreeBSD + ZFS), where we keep:
  - 6 months of daily backups
  - 3 months of weekly backups
  - 3-6 months (as space permits) of monthly backups

We snapshot our backups server every morning, thus creating the "daily
backup".  Deleting all but the 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th snapshot creates
the "weekly backup".  Deleting all but the 14th creates the "monthly
backup".

Between rsync, FreeBSD, and ZFS, we're able to backup 127 remote
servers (most with just ADSL links) every night, and replicate (via
rsync) that to an off-site server every day.  And for less than 10% of
what most "enterprise backups systems" cost.  :)

-- 
Freddie Cash
fjwcash@gmail.com