zip with backups, performance hits?

[number9]

Running 5.0.23_GA_3242.RHEL5_64_20100326184313 RHEL5_64 NETWORK edition

Hello, my backup directory is getting filled... I do not have a lot of drive space I can add to this directory, so in the interim before I get more disk space, I am thinking of adding the -zip option to the zmbackup cron job.

I have read a few articles on it, but none that seem to answer the following three questions:

Does your server take a significant performance hit for this operation? Does it vastly increase backup time?

The most important question I have is this: Do I have to change anything else, or will the system be ok with it (for example, I go to restore someones mail... do I need to go unzip that blob by hand, or will Zimbra automagically do it?).

Thanks in advance.

[NathanL]

coincidentally, i'm looking for an answer to the same question, but on zcs 6.0.8, rather than 5.x.

[ewilen]

When we went from ZCS 5 to ZCS 6, the default was changed from --noZip to --zipStore. Note that --zipStore is zipping without compression, so --zip will be even slower. But I don't have any data for --zip.

I posted my experience with --zipStore (default for ZCS 6) and --noZip at zipped vs unzipped backups

In short if you keep more than one full backup on disk at a time, --noZip is much faster. I can't answer the other questions but I doubt you need to do anything manually in order to restore from a zipped/compressed backup.