zfs snapshot management

[Arnaud Houdelette]

Hi !

I use home-made scripts as I found none that met my expectations.

I used the following aproach :

  - Do 1 (or more) snapshots each day, named @`date -u 
+AUTO-%Y.%m.%d-%H.%M.%S-UTC`. (no @daily, @weekly, @monthly ... 
snapshots)

  - Run a cleanup script to destroy uneeded snapshots, using " zfs get 
-Hpo value creation $snap " to get snapshot times, thus avoiding 
daylight saving issues.

Said script calculates first snapshot to keep and deletes older 
snapshots, then calculates next snapshot to keep and deletes 
'in-betweens' and so on.


I used said snapshots with a patched samba vfs_shadowcopy2 'til samba35 
broke the patch.

I can provide the scripts if wanted.

Arnaud Houdelette


On Sun, 5 Jun 2011 22:32:55 -0400 (EDT), Charles Sprickman wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I've been using a few different tools to manage zfs snapshots in 
> different
> scenarios.  For local use, I've found that Ralf Engelschall's set of
> scripts[1] that tie into the periodic(8) system work fairly well.  I 
> do
> not use the amd portion since I am only working with zfs snapshots 
> and I
> don't see a need to actually re-mount the snapshots elsewhere for
> recovery.  The only limitation I find with this system is that for 
> use on
> a backups host the lack of a monthly or yearly retention period 
> pretty
> much rules it out.  For local "oops" stuff though, it's great.
>
> For hosts acting as backups servers, I've been using Snapfilter[2] 
> and
> some cobbled together stuff that rsyncs a bunch of hosts and tries to
> detect and notify on errors.  Snapfilter simply is the zfs snapshot
> "sweeper" that periodically deletes snapshots that are outside the 
> defined
> retention period(s).
>
> Since there seems to be a fair number of serious zfs users here, I 
> was
> hoping for some further suggestions for use in either case.  Any 
> input is
> welcome...
>
> Thanks,
>
> Charles
>
> [1] - http://people.freebsd.org/~rse/snapshot/
> [2] - http://www.scottlu.com/Content/Snapfilter.html
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