Musings on ZFS Backup strategies

[Ben Morrow]

Quoth Daniel Eischen <deischen at freebsd.org>:
> 
> Yes, we still use a couple of DLT autoloaders and have nightly
> incrementals and weekly fulls.  This is the problem I have with
> converting to ZFS.  Our typical recovery is when a user says
> they need a directory or set of files from a week or two ago.
> Using dump from tape, I can easily extract *just* the necessary
> files.  I don't need a second system to restore to, so that
> I can then extract the file.

As Karl said originally, you can do that with snapshots without having
to go to your backups at all. With the right arrangements (symlinks to
the .zfs/snapshot/* directories, or just setting the snapdir property to
'visible') you can make it so users can do this sort of restore
themselves without having to go through you.

Ben