How to: cold standby server (no cluster)

[parixit]

It would great to hear from someone at Zimbra

[iway]

Yes, a Zimbra statement would be appreciated.

[stiller]

I hate to break it to you guys, but this feature probably will never be implemented. It has been part of the official roadmap since the very start of the project. (see this document from 2005: http://files.zimbra.com/website/docs...20Overview.pdf)

Also, the RFE has been in bugzilla since at least 2006 (Bug 11423 – disaster recovery through server to server sync (beta)) and has amassed nearly 100 votes.

The feature just seems to be continually pushed back to some feature release. An official stance from Zimbra on this seems long overdue. I consider the fail-over solution using a SAN and RHEL cluster services to be inferior, since these produce added complexity and issues of their own.

Come on Zimbra make a choice: drop it or implement it!

[iway]

Could we get any statement from Zimbra here? This is really important for us!

[vikjava]

hi all!

can you help me step by step? I am a new bie on ubuntu and zimbra.

thanks

[gvillaran]

anyone have found a backup/restore procedure that works with Zimbra Open Source 6.0?

im thinking on changing my email server to zimbra, but i doubt it i can do it without a tested backup/restore procedure, i was looking at wiki but that info is for previous versions right?

[phoenix]

The information in the wiki (and forums and the blog) should also apply to Zimbra 6 for backing up the OSS version.

[msallee]

This is an old post, but I'm sure I'm not the only one looking for more info about how to do the cold-standby server.

If you copy a server 1:1 using rsync, and change the hostname/IP to make it a new secondary system, won't that cause problems with LDAP not knowing what the IP is supposed to be? How should we change the LDAP, MySQL, or other services that may still contain the old IP address and hostname, so they will work?

[msallee]

This is an old post, but I'm sure I'm not the only one looking for more info about how to do the cold-standby server.

If you copy a server 1:1 using rsync, and change the hostname/IP to make it a new secondary system, won't that cause problems with LDAP not knowing what the IP is supposed to be? How should we change the LDAP, MySQL, or other services that may still contain the old IP address and hostname, so they will work?

I'll answer my own question here - I was a able to do an rsync from the primary to the secondary Zimbra system, and use the zmsetservername command on the secondary:

ZmSetServerName - Zimbra :: Wiki

[ekkas]

I know it's an old thread, but :

On the issue of backups:
Search for zmbak_v.0.8.sh script. Works very well. Not most efficient i.t.o. storage space, I modified it to FTP backups every night to a Windows PC running free FileZilla FTP server. Does weekly full and daily incremental.

On the issue of live sync:
Howto: Highly available Zimbra cluster using Heartbeat and DRBD | green bee digital

Is 1 example of how to use DRDB & Heartbeat with Zimbra. I use it to run a Zimbra 6 physical server that DRDB/Heartbeat to a virtual server in case things go pear shaped. Saved my butt once already. Works very well, but stock up on coffee as it will take a while. Initial syncing takes forever...