>> The beauty of ufsdump/ufsrestore is that because it's bundled with the >> operating system, I can perform bare metal recovery using a Solaris DVD and >> locally attached tape drive. It's simple and arguably essential for system >> administrators.
> Yep. And it was invented because there was no option other than tar > at the time. Today, there are many very comprehensive backup solutions > on the market including open source. Some are nicely integrated, such > as NexentaStor and Zmanda. When I look at the documentation for Zmanda (http://docs.zmanda.com/Project:Amanda_Enterprise_3.0/ZMC_Users_Manual/Appendix_A:_Backing_Up_and_Restoring_Solaris_ZFS), it states that the command used to backup a ZFS filesystem depends on whether backing up ACLs are required (the default is not to(!)). If backing up ACLs are required - which they are for us - then the native /usr/bin/tar command is used. Given that /usr/bin/tar doesn't handle sparse files correctly and updates atime when creating archives, it's not possible to create a complete copy of a filesystem without making intrusive changes to the structure of the data and/or metadata. So it's arguable that ufsdump was a significant improvement over tar, and that the current archiving solutions for ZFS are actually a step backwards. > From my perspective, Sun really need to create a zfsdump/zfsrestore set of > commands that perform block level backups of a specified filesystem (or > snapshot) and that preserves ACLs, atime, sparse files, handles multiple > tapes (many of us still use and rely on tape!) etc. > In my crystal ball, I see a divergence away from traditional backup > solution approaches. Today you can feel comfortable with backing up > ZFS file systems because they provide a POSIX file system interface. Based on what I've seen in other comments, you might be right. Unfortunately, I don't feel comfortable backing up ZFS filesystems because the tools aren't there to do it (built into the operating system or using Zmanda/Amanda). I know tape backup isn't sexy, but it's a reality for many of us and it's not going away anytime soon. JR
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