[SOLVED] NE Backups to span filesystems

[Nutz]

Running NE 5.0.12 on CentOS 4 x64 2xdual-core Proc 32 GB RAM

I'm working on a plan to upgrade my server box to something that will last me a while longer. The primary storage will be moving to a SAN and the machine will get a big fat boost of RAM + CPUs.

Will be: Centos 5.3 x64 2XQuad-Core Proc

Problem comes in when you get to backups. Currently, from what I can tell, the /opt/zimbra/backup directory is approx 2-2.5 X the size of everything else put together.

If my store were to grow 100%, I'd be looking at 5 TB of space required for backups. I expect this to happen in the next year or so. The ext3 filesystem has an upper limit of 8 TB (subtract out the space the FS needs just for itself).

So here's the question: How do I get my backups to work if I expect them to be over 8 TB?

Thank you!
Nutz

[Klug]

(You know your OS is not supported, don't you?)

Are you currently using compressed backup?

[Nutz]

1) Yes I know...

2) No, as I cannot take the performance hit of the compression. It currently takes 9+ hours to back up as it is...

Cheers,
Nutz

[fcash]

Originally Posted by Nutz

So here's the question: How do I get my backups to work if I expect them to be over 8 TB?

Simplest solution: don't use ext3. It was never designed for use with filesystems over a TB. Shoot, it has issues with anything over 0.5 TB. Use XFS instead. That's one of the main benefits of XFS (multi-terabyte filesystems).

Next simplest solution: mount /opt/zimbra/backups off a network share using iSCSI, NFS, CIFS, whatever. That way, the remote host can worry about disk sizes. And you can use something better like ZFS, which has no practical limits on FS/pool sizes.

[Nutz]

Now there's a good idea.

Just what I was looking for. Thank you!

[brian]

Originally Posted by Nutz

1) Yes I know...

2) No, as I cannot take the performance hit of the compression. It currently takes 9+ hours to back up as it is...

Cheers,
Nutz

I'd recommended the combination of compressed backups and auto-grouped backup mode. The default divides the accounts into 7 groups. If you have 700 accounts it will do full backups of 100 accounts each night and incrementals of the remaining (by copying redologs). This significantly reduces the backup window needed to do full backups by spreading the accounts out over the week.

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