restoring mail from off-site backup

[orobbert]

Hey all,

We have a virtual slice containing a Zimbra installation. Since the slice has limited space, Zimbra's backups are copied every night to a larger backup server. The other day I got a request to restore a mailbox on 3/17.

When I went to copy the backup file from 3/17 to the slice, I filled up the disk, causing Zimbra to crash. To make room, I'll have to remove one of the backups that is currently on the slice (we keep a week's worth on the slice just in case). Our server admin says this will cause Zimbra to try and recreate the removed backup, filling up the disk again.

So my question is: is there any way to to a restoration from a backup file that isn't on the same server as the zimbra installation? And do I need to include just the nearest full backup or do I need to include all backups since that point for Zimbra to do a proper restoration?

-Robbert

[bdial]

you can't do a restore unless you had a spare machine iwth a full installation.

assuming you do a typical full backup friday, incremental every other day you'd need to have the full backup from the friday before the date you want to restore to, plus every incremental backup leading up to the specific day including the day you need to restore to. those incrementals contain redologs which basically suppliment the full backup with everything that happened in the following days

[orobbert]

Thank you for your reply.

Is there any way to remove a current backup on the slice without Zimbra re-creating it? I figured we could turn off backups but I really would prefer not having to do that.

And if I do manage to copy the required backup files to the slice, will it be possible to restore from them, even though they are out of sequence with the other backups?