Backup tool fot ZFS with all "classic dump(8)" fetatures -- what should I use? (or is here any way to make dump -L works well on large FFS2+SU?)

[Kevin Thompson]

On Mon, 28 Mar 2011 03:20:07 -0400, Lev Serebryakov <lev at freebsd.org>  
wrote:


>   I'm thinking to transfer GOME filesystem to ZFS. But I can not find
> appropriate tools for backing it up. Here is some requirements:

Have you considered a full-up backup solution, like bacula? It's a  
client/server/server model backup system - there's a server process that  
coordinates all actions ('director'), various server process that run on  
machines with the devices/mounts/disks for storing the backups ('storage  
daemons') and then each client runs a little process to give access to the  
backup servers ('file daemons').

It allows you to specify a large amount of behavior. You can store backup  
to disk/file and to tape. If using disks/files, you can backup to the same  
file always, backup to files with 1gb max etc, or backup to a new file  
each time iirc. It has support for arbitrary schedules with each schedule  
being able to specify the dump level (full, incremental, differential) It  
uses a database in the director for metadata. And, iirc, it honors the  
nodump flag, stores ACLs, etc.

Most importantly, it has support for pre- and post-backup hooks, so you  
can tell it to snapshot beforehand and then (probably, see below) use the  
post-hook to push the data where you want.

Reading about your requirement #1, I'm guessing that the backup data is  
being collected locally and then sent over ftp for permanent storage. Do  
you have control over this remote machine? Could you replace ftp with  
bacula's networked client/server model? This might be the one spot that  
would be hard to make bacula work for you, I'm not sure since I haven't  
played with bacula in this configuration and I'm not exactly sure what  
your restrictions are.

Even then, you could probably mount the FTP server as a 'file system' ala  
sshfs and have the storage daemon write it directly to the mounted file  
system.

And yeah, it's free. http://www.bacula.org

If you want to give it a shot, you can set it up on a little test machine  
and have it backup to itself. I might recommend doing this anyway since  
you'll want to be able to experiment with configuration and controls  
before trying it on your production machine.

--Kevin