Compressing Zimbra Directory for Backup

[abacabb]

I have my zimbra directory RSYNCed to another directory as a backup. I want to compress the backup directory into a file that will preserve all permissions, symlinks, hardlinks, and everything else necessary to keep zimbra operational.

Someone told me to look into using TAR for this. I checked the MAN page and see lots of different options for that command. Does anyone know the necessary options needed in the TAR command to properly archive zimbra into a single file?

[matnor]

rsync -azv will do the job..look here

How to Backup Linux? 15 rsync Command Examples

I'm backing up using rsync to other standby server.

[beli.sk]

Hi,
if you need to compress Zimbra directory with tar, you just need a command line like:

tar -jcvf /tmp/zimbraarchive.tar.bz2 /opt/zimbra

-j ... compress with bzip2
-c ... create
-v ... verbose, prints each file processed, but you can miss some errors in the output (optional)
-f <file> ... name of archive file

Adjust the names and paths for your needs.
An archive like this can then be restored (into current working directory) with

tar -jxvpf /tmp/zimbraarchive.tar.bz2

-x ... extract
-p ... preserve permissions when extracting

Ofcourse Zimbra has to be down to be able to archive a consistent and restorable state. Or use some kind of volume snapshoting for example with LVM, but that's a bit advanced stuff.

Hope this helps.

[jonallport]

Originally Posted by beli.sk

Ofcourse Zimbra has to be down to be able to archive a consistent and restorable state.

I work-around this by rsyncing to local storage first, then tar-ing to the remote backup server. The steps I user are:

- rsync to local (live)
- Stop ZCS
- rsync to local (down)
- Start ZCS
- TAR local rsync copy to remote storage

I know that doubles the storage requirements on my ZCS box but it minimises downtime and also means that if something goes wrong I can be back up and running in a few line at the CLI; move the broken ZCS out of the way, rename the backup copy, fixperms and restart!