OSE Backup Best Practice ?

**nameless'** · 11-26-2010, 08:23 AM

Hello,

I want to backup my Zimbra Config & Data.

I know there is a script for it, I tried it, but this solution isn't good for me, as there is a down time (even if it's not long), and I want to be able to restore only onemailbox if needed, and so on...

I have my main mail server (Zimbra of course

), running well. In case of disaster, I have to be able to restore the mail service within the next 2 hours.

So, here what I have done :

- Making a script that make a tar of /opt/zimbra, but excludes the store directory. (So basically I just keep the Zimbra install/Configuration). This script would run each day to have a working copy of my zimbra Install.

- Making a script that backup each mailbox individually, daily. (with the REST interface)

- Installed a second Zimbra Server, not connected to the network.

If I have a problem, I would juste untar my Zimbra Config to my new Zimbra mail server (with same IP/hostname of course), then importing each mailbox again with the REST interface, then restarting Zimbra services.

I tested this configuration and it seems to work well (ie after restore, tried to send mails only locally, but it worked), but I want to know if I could get troubles with this method ?

Thanks for your advices

**get2guy** · 11-27-2010, 02:23 AM

Hi.

I really dont have an answer to your Q but i will be happy to take a look at your script.

I'm looking to do something similar only that my backup server will be in the network.

Regards
Guy

**ewilen** · 11-30-2010, 05:08 PM

I think this is a very clever approach. My only concern would be scaling as the number of users and amount of online mail increase over time. Basically you are doing a full backup of each account each time, and you will have to restore them one at a time. By contrast, the FOSS recipes I've seen essentially do incremental backups via rsync, and activating a backup server requires very little moving/modifying of data.