Zimbra NE Syncing Backups

[elinstad]

I feel like I have searched and search and read all the docs I can read in regards to my question. I have found nothing but FOSS answers and I am not sure if they apply to NE.

My question is when I want to rsync backups off of my main ZCS server should I or do I have to stop Zimbra first?

It seems that almost all of the rsync FOSS scripts that I have come across indeed do this.

Would anyone using NE and with a working rsync script like to enlighten me? I have NO desire to use NFS since it is, in m opinion, a nightmare

Thanks in advance for help,

Erik

[bdial]

once a backup has completed, zimbra is not dependent on the backup directory any more. for instance, since nfs is so slow i don't backup directly to it, but after hte backup is done i move it from /opt/zimbra/backup/sessions to a nfs mount all while zimbr ais running.

[jrefl5]

I use rsync to keep a backup server "close" to the production box, but we are a small NE site (less than 2K messages to SA /day and maybe 400 "Clean" ones). Only need the backup system once due to a hardware failure and I'm sure we missed a few e-mails but it worked.
When we swung back to the production system (clean install new HW) I did 2 rsyncs while the backup system was running, then stopped zimbra and did a final rsync followed by the swing over.

Note this is an rsync of /opt/zimbra