* Damion Alexander <lo...@damion-alexander.org> [20110124 11:31]: > ----- 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.
Absolutely, the context of the original post was "personal server". Still, but as the context of this list is "sysadmin" I thought it good to bring up the issue of backups. > > > 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. It's easy to understand why the devs designed the system that way, it just makes it a harder system to hack on without becoming a full fledged Zimbra expert. > > > 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 > Cool! Is this sort of backup implicitly full/0-level? Is there a way to do incremental archives? I really appreciate how well "file and directory" structured options, like cyrus imap or dovecot for instance, lend themselves to the perpetual incremental (ie rsync) style of backup which is so critical these days as mail volume surges. > 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. Understood. Thanks for the insights. Ben -- ________________________________________________________________________ PGP (318B6A97): 3F23 EBC8 B73E 92B7 0A67 705A 8219 DCF0 318B 6A97
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