Does unscheduled full backups - why?

[Jay2k1]

Hello. My Zimbra server on 6.0.6 has the default backup schedule - it does, however, additional full backups, and I don't know why. See here:

[zimbra@email ~]$ cd /opt/zimbra/backup/sessions/
[zimbra@email sessions]$ ls -lahtr
total 120K
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K May 15 05:45 full-20100514.230005.305
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K May 16 01:01 incr-20100515.230012.926
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K May 17 01:00 incr-20100516.230016.806
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K May 18 01:01 incr-20100517.230012.869
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K May 18 01:01 full-20100517.230123.029
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K May 19 01:02 incr-20100518.230012.660
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K May 20 01:01 incr-20100519.230016.387
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K May 21 01:01 incr-20100520.230014.394
drwxr-x---  5 zimbra zimbra 4.0K May 22 02:02 full-20100521.230007.908
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K May 23 01:01 incr-20100522.230012.672
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K May 24 01:00 incr-20100523.230009.789
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K May 25 01:00 incr-20100524.230013.811
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K May 26 01:01 incr-20100525.230012.529
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K May 27 01:01 incr-20100526.230012.496
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K May 28 01:02 incr-20100527.230012.833
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K May 29 06:05 full-20100528.230005.255
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K May 30 01:01 incr-20100529.230014.463
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K May 31 01:02 incr-20100530.230017.767
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K Jun  1 01:02 incr-20100531.230013.344
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K Jun  2 01:01 incr-20100601.230012.187
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K Jun  2 01:01 full-20100601.230130.165
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K Jun  3 01:01 incr-20100602.230012.244
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K Jun  4 01:01 incr-20100603.230012.414
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K Jun  5 05:51 full-20100604.230007.747
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K Jun  6 01:01 incr-20100605.230014.759
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K Jun  7 01:00 incr-20100606.230011.441
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K Jun  8 01:01 incr-20100607.230012.683
drwxr-xr-x  4 zimbra zimbra 4.0K Jun  9 00:00 ..
drwxr-x---  6 zimbra zimbra 4.0K Jun  9 01:01 incr-20100608.230011.407
drwxr-x--- 30 zimbra zimbra 4.0K Jun  9 01:01 .
[zimbra@email sessions]$ zmschedulebackup 
Current Schedule:

        f 0 1 * * 6 -a all
        i 0 1 * * 0-5 
        d 1m 0 0 * * * 
[zimbra@email sessions]$

Any idea?

[odeleon]

It's most likely because you created new accounts on those dates. Zimbra does an initial full of just those new accounts so it has a base for the next day's incremental copy.

One way to check this is to look at the disk space used by each backup copy. The unscheduled full backup should be much (MUCH) smaller than the "regular" one.

Also, if you look in the admin web console, hover your mouse pointer over any backup listed it will tell you how many accounts are included in that copy.

[mhlevy]

This brings up an important question... The nightly incremental backup is done first, then the full backup of the new accounts.

So if a full restore is required, how is this to be done? Do you go back to the last weekly full and restore it, then restore each incremental and full backup in order, followed by the archived redo logs? Or can you skip restoring the unscheduled full backups?

I guess I'm a bit confused here.

Thanks in advance!

Mark

Originally Posted by odeleon

It's most likely because you created new accounts on those dates. Zimbra does an initial full of just those new accounts so it has a base for the next day's incremental copy.

One way to check this is to look at the disk space used by each backup copy. The unscheduled full backup should be much (MUCH) smaller than the "regular" one.

Also, if you look in the admin web console, hover your mouse pointer over any backup listed it will tell you how many accounts are included in that copy.