zfs dump to non-zfs host

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Sat, Jun 14, 2008 at 10:40:19AM +0900, Randy Bush wrote:
> currently, my dump server is a large non-zfs raid to which i use dump
> over ssh to a remote host, as in
> 
>    /sbin/dump 0Luaf - /dev/twed0s1a | $SSH $BSYS "/bin/cat > $DDIR/base"
> 
> now i have a zfs host that i want to dump to this server.  yes, i know i
> can snapshot on the zfs system itself.  but what if it goes completely
> dead?  it is in an earthquake zone, ...
> 
> /sbin/dump does not work, of course.
> 
> files created with zsend might not be decodable in a future version, so
> i can not zsend | to it.

The only two options I see are "zfs send" (which you've covered), and
using rsync for that host.  We switched to rsync exclusively (regardless
of fuilesystem) due to dump -L becoming slower and slower over time on
UFS2 filesystems (a known problem), plus more or less deadlocking the
system while it makes the snapshot.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |