ZCS Administrator's Guide Network Edition 6.0.8

Backup and Restore

Zimbra Backup Methods

Directory Structure for Backup Files

Backup and Restore Using the Administration Console

Backup and Restore Using the Command Line Interface

Backing up using the Standard Method

Aborting Full Backup In Progress

Backing up using the Auto-Grouped Method

Backup Options

Restoring Data

Disaster Recovery for Specific Situations

Using snapshots to backup and restore

Backing up the ZCS mailbox server on a regular basis can help you quickly restore your mail service, if an unexpected crash occurs. The backup process writes a consistent snapshot of mailboxes to a designated backup directory.

ZCS mailboxes can be restored from the following:

•	Full backup files that contain all the information needed to restore mailboxes

•	Incremental backup files that contain the LDAP data files and all the redo logs written since the last backup

•	Redo logs that contain current and archived transactions processed by the mailbox server since the last incremental backup

Figure 2 shows the sequence of a full recovery. When a system is restored, the last full backup is restored, each incremental backup since the last backup is restored, and the archived and current redo logs are restored.

Figure 2: Sample backup timeline

This chapter describes how data is backed up and restored and how to use the CLI tools to backup or restore your ZCS mailbox server. In addition, this chapter also provides information and general guidelines for disaster recovery.

ZCS Administrator's Guide Network Edition 6.0.8