Well yes paying is good and it gives you lot more than just hot backup and restore..i have not got any time to do that yet but logically you don’t need to SHUT DOWN open source version really to BACKUP zimbra..
I am just thinking logically..
MySQL and LDAP and FILE STORE so all you need to figure out is how to do
1) HOT BACKUP of mysql
2) dont know how LDAP store data if we can just COPY
3) email store..for sure its just file copy
* iam talking about full backup..plus if you using a backup software it willl do incremental too so you dont backup 100's of gigs every time..only changed files..
so some day i will pull an all nighter and have this answers...till then if someone else is up in night doing this do post..
Raj