I've not read through each of the posts, but I found the easiest way to backup the opensource version of Zimbra is:
1) Shutting it down for a minute.
2) Doing a snapshot of the LVM partition.
3) Starting Zimbra again.
4) rsynching that snapshot I made to the backup server.
5) deleting LVM snapshot once completed.
This pretty much means if I need restore from backup, all I need to do is rsync it back, no reimporting of data to MySQL/ldap etc.
A minute of downtime at 3AM isn't really going to effect anyone here. If you're running a mission critical setup that needs to be up 24/7, non-stop. One wonders why you aren't running a grid setup (or using the commerical versions) that would easilly allow you to turn one server off for a 'clean' back up without interupting the service since the other servers are still online. |