----- Original Message -----
> * Damion Alexander <lo...@damion-alexander.org> [20110123 13:24]:
> >
> > I suggest looking at Zimbra Community Edition for the entire setup.
> >
> ....
> >
> > I'd be happy to answer any questions. Helps me finish my zimbra talk
> > for the upcoming lug meeting :) . (I would still recommend Zimbra
> > even if I wasn't giving a talk on it)
> 
> Hi Damion,
> 
> As you're advocating the use of Zimbra Community Edition, I'm curious
> how you suggest performing regular backups for anything other than
> disaster recovery.
>

If you are looking to support thousands of users, I would recommend Network 
Edition, but I didn't get that sense from the original poster.
 
> One of the key features missing from Zimbra Community Edition is a
> "Zimbra Savvy" backup method. This is important because, unlike a lot
> of more traditional mail servers (save perhaps Exchange, about which
> I don't know much), Zimbra stores user data all over the place (in
> flat files, in its embedded OpenLDAP, and in its mailbox database).
> 

Account definitions and settings are in ldap.
metadata about items (mail,calendar,etc) are in mysql.
items (data) is stored in flat files.

It seems odd they would do things this way, but after digging through recently 
I found that it gives them the ability to version items.  I only know of the 
notebook currently that has versioning exposed to the user. But they treat all 
data essentially the same.

> Disaster recovery backups are possible by shutting down the service,
> making a filesystem snapshot and then backing that snapshot up to
> disk or tape. But individual mailbox backups (and more importantly
> *restores*) are only supported with the commercially supported version
> of Zimbra.

Even with the Network Edition, you can't pick an individual message to restore. 
 You still have to do a restore to a separate account and then pick what you 
want to copy over.  That said the only feature you can't replicate with the 
Open Source edition is a Point in Time restore. Meaning bringing the account to 
the state is was at X date/time.  Everything else can be done with the tools 
that ship in both versions.

For example a quick&dirty way to replicate individual backups and restores:

zmprov getallaccounts > myaccounts.txt
for i in `cat myaccounts.txt` ;
 do echo "sm $i" >> backmeup.zm ;
 echo "getRestURL \“//?fmt=tgz\” > /backups/$i.tgz" >> backmeup.zm ;
 zmprov getAccount $i > /backups/$i.settings ;
done
zmmailbox -z -f backmeup.zm > logfile.log 2>&1

Restore:
zmmailbox -z -m user@domain postRestURL “//?fmt=tgz&resolve=reset” 
/backups/account.tgz

There is an article on the wiki, 
http://wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/Backup_and_Restore_Articles, that goes over various 
backup options and scripts.  Also this zimbra blog post, 
http://blog.zimbra.com/blog/archives/2008/09/zcs-to-zcs-migrations.html,  goes 
over Zimbra to Zimbra migrations which essentially is a backup and restore 
procedure.

> 
> See the section labeled "Real-time backup and restore":
> 
> http://www.zimbra.com/products/compare_products.html
> 
> Please correct me if this is no longer the case.
> 

Since it's a selling point I doubt they will ever make the handy-dandy tools 
available for Backup and Restore available in the Open Source version.  However 
they don't make it impossible to do.  


> Ben
> 
> --
> ________________________________________________________________________
> PGP (318B6A97): 3F23 EBC8 B73E 92B7 0A67 705A 8219 DCF0 318B 6A97
_______________________________________________
Tech mailing list
Tech@lists.lopsa.org
https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech
This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators
 http://lopsa.org/

Reply via email to