ZCS Administrator Guide 8.0

Network Edition

Directory Structure for Backup Files

The backup destination is known as a backup target. To the backup system, it is a path in the file system of the mail server. The Zimbra default backup directory is /opt/zimbra/backup.

The backup directory structure created by the standard backup process is shown in Standard Backup directory structure. You can run regularly scheduled backups to the same target area without overwriting previous backup sessions.

The accounts.xml file lists all accounts that are in all the backups combined. For each account, this file shows the account ID, the email address, and the label of the latest full backup for that account. If you save your backup sessions to another location, you must also save the latest accounts.xml file to that location. The accounts.xml file is used to look up the latest full Backup for an account during restore. If the accounts.xml file is missing you must specify the backup label to restore from.

The redo log directory is located at /opt/zimbra/redolog/redo.log. When the current redo log file size reaches 100MB, the current redo log rolls over to an archive directory, /opt/zimbra/redolog/archive. At this point the server starts a new redo log. All uncommitted transactions from the previous redo log are preserved. In the case of a crash, when the server restarts, the current redo logs are read to re-apply any uncommitted transactions.

Redo operations are time critical, therefore a directory move is performed instead of a copy-then-delete function. This directory move can only be performed if the source and destination paths are on the same file system volume. In other words, the redo log and redo-archive log must be on the same file system volume because the archive files are a subdirectory of the redo log file system.

All incremental and auto-grouped backup sessions must be saved to the same directory as all the redo logs must be found in the same backup target. Standard full backup sessions can use a different target directory.

Standard Backup directory structure

/opt/zimbra/backup Default root of backups

accounts.xml/      List of all accounts, each with email file address, Zimbra ID, and latest full backup label. The accounts.xml maintains the mapping of email addresses to their current zimbraIds and also the most recent full backup for each account.

sessions/        Root of backup sessions.

full-<timestamp>/    A full backup directory. The timestamp for a session is the backup start time in GMT, including milliseconds. GMT is used rather than local time to preserve visual ordering across daylight savings transitions.

session.xml    Metadata about this backup label for full or incremental session, such as start and stop times.

shared_blobs/ Contains message files that are shared among accounts in this backup.

sys/ Global database tables and localconfig.

db_schema.xml   Database schema information for global tables. Each table dump file has a .csv format.

localconfig.xml Copy of /opt/zimbra/conf/localconfig.xml at the time of the backup.

<table name>.dat Database table data dump.

LDAP/ldap.bak     LDAP dumps.

accounts/   Each account’s data is saved in a subdirectory of this.

<.../zimbraId>/ Root for each account.

meta.xml Metadata about this account’s backup.

ldap.xml Account’s LDAP information, including aliases, identities, data sources, distribution lists, etc.

ldap_latest.xml If this is present, this files links to ldap.xml of the most recent incremental backup.

db/ Account-specific database table dumps.

db_schema.xml Database schema information for this account’s tables.

<table name>.dat Database table data dump.

blobs/ Contains blob files.

index/ Contains Lucene index files.

     incr-<timestamp> An incremental backup directory. This directory is similar to the full backup directory schema and includes these meta files.

session.xml

sys/db_schema.xml

accounts/..../<zimbraID>/ldap.xml

incr-<timestamp> does not include accounts/.../<zimbraId>/db/db_schema.xml because incremental backup does not dump account tables.

Note:

For auto-grouped backups, the directory structure saves the redo log files to the full backup session. There are no incremental backup sessions.