From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Mar 4 17:05:26 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [8.8.178.115]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A4581C24 for ; Mon, 4 Mar 2013 17:05:26 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from dmagda@ee.ryerson.ca) Received: from eccles.ee.ryerson.ca (eccles.ee.ryerson.ca [141.117.1.2]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 73CDD88A for ; Mon, 4 Mar 2013 17:05:25 +0000 (UTC) Received: from webmail.ee.ryerson.ca (eccles [172.16.1.2]) by eccles.ee.ryerson.ca (8.14.4/8.14.4) with ESMTP id r24H4PTI075344; Mon, 4 Mar 2013 12:04:25 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from dmagda@ee.ryerson.ca) Received: from 206.108.127.2 (SquirrelMail authenticated user dmagda) by webmail.ee.ryerson.ca with HTTP; Mon, 4 Mar 2013 12:04:25 -0500 Message-ID: <1e4c24a68e76a279eaf4dc4f7c0156d3.squirrel@webmail.ee.ryerson.ca> In-Reply-To: <5134C6C2.9020009@gmail.com> References: <5130BA35.5060809@denninger.net> <5130EB8A.7060706@gmail.com> <2B318078-F863-4415-8DAE-94EE4431BF4C@ee.ryerson.ca> <5134C6C2.9020009@gmail.com> Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2013 12:04:25 -0500 Subject: Re: Musings on ZFS Backup strategies From: "David Magda" To: "Volodymyr Kostyrko" User-Agent: SquirrelMail/1.4.22 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 04 Mar 2013 17:05:26 -0000 On Mon, March 4, 2013 11:07, Volodymyr Kostyrko wrote: > 02.03.2013 03:12, David Magda: >> There are quite a few scripts out there: >> >> http://www.freshports.org/search.php?query=zfs > > A lot of them require python or ruby, and none of them manages > synchronizing snapshots over network. Yes, but I think it is worth considering the creation of snapshots, and the transfer of snapshots, as two separate steps. By treating them independently (perhaps in two different scripts), it helps prevent the breakage in one from affecting the other. Snapshots are not backups (IMHO), but they are handy for users and sysadmins for the simple situations of accidentally files. If your network access / copying breaks or is slow for some reason, at least you have simply copies locally. Similarly if you're having issues with the machine that keeps your remove pool. By keeping the snapshots going separately, once any problems with the network or remote server are solved, you can use them to incrementally sync up the remote pool. You can simply run the remote-sync scripts more often to do the catch up. It's just an idea, and everyone has different needs. I often find it handy to keep different steps in different scripts that are loosely coupled. >> This allows one to get a quick list of files and directories, then use >> tar/rsync/cp/etc. to do the actual copy (where the destination does not >> have to be ZFS: e.g., NFS, ext4, Lustre, HDFS, etc.). > > I know that but I see no reason in reverting to file-based synch if I > can do block-based. Sure. I just thought I'd mention it in the thread in case other do need that functionality and were not aware of "zfs diff". Not everyone does or can do pool-to-pool backups.