zfs discuss - Nov 2009 - flar and tar the best way to backup S10 ZFS only?

I''m persuading a customer that when he goes to S10 he should use ZFS
for everything. We only have one M3000 and a J4200 connected
to it. We are not
talking about a massive site here with a SAN etc. The M3000 is their
"mainframe". His RTO and RPO are both about 12 hours, his business
gets
difficult without the server but does not die horribly.

He currently uses ufsdump to tape each night which is
sent off site. However "ufsrestore -i" has saved is bacon in the past
and does not want to loose this "functionality".

A couple of questions.

flar seems to work with ZFS quite well and will backup the whole root
pool   flar(1M)

This seems to be the best way to get the equivalent of ufsrestore -r
and a great way to recover in a DR event:-
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/submitted/flash_archive.jsp

My Questions...

Q: Is there the equivalent of ufsretore -i with flar? (which
seems to be an ugly shell script around cpio or pax)

Q: Therefore should I have a tar of the root pool as well?

Q: There is no reason I cannot use flar on the other non root pools?

Q: Or is tar better for the non root pools?

We will have LOTS of disk space, his whole working dataset will easily
fit onto an LTO4, so can anybody think of good a reason why you would
not flar the root pool into another pool and then just tar off this
pool each night to tape? In fact we will have so much disk space
(compared to now) I expect we will will be able to keep most backups
on-line for quite some time.

Discuss :-)

-- 

Trevor Pretty 
| Technical Account Manager
|
T: +64 9 639 0652 |
M: +64 21 666 161

Eagle Technology Group Ltd. 

Gate D, Alexandra Park, Greenlane West, Epsom

Private Bag 93211, Parnell, Auckland

www.eagle.co.nz 

This email is confidential and may be legally 
privileged. If received in error please destroy and immediately notify 
us.


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On Nov 23, 2009, at 8:24 PM, Trevor Pretty wrote:
>
> I''m persuading a customer that when he goes to S10 he should use
ZFS
> for everything. We only have one M3000 and a J4200 connected to it.  
> We are not talking about a massive site here with a SAN etc. The  
> M3000 is their "mainframe". His RTO and RPO are both about 12
hours,
> his business gets difficult without the server but does not die  
> horribly.
>
> He currently uses ufsdump to tape each night which is sent off site.  
> However "ufsrestore -i" has saved is bacon in the past and does
not
> want to loose this "functionality".
>
> A couple of questions.
>
> flar seems to work with ZFS quite well and will backup the whole  
> root pool   flar(1M)
flar is mostly a wrapper for cpio, integrated with the installer
> This seems to be the best way to get the equivalent of ufsrestore -r  
> and a great way to recover in a DR event:-
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/submitted/flash_archive.jsp
>
> My Questions...
>
> Q: Is there the equivalent of ufsretore -i with flar? (which seems  
> to be an ugly shell script around cpio or pax)
no
> Q: Therefore should I have a tar of the root pool as well?
ok
> Q: There is no reason I cannot use flar on the other non root pools?
no
> Q: Or is tar better for the non root pools?
ok
> We will have LOTS of disk space, his whole working dataset will  
> easily fit onto an LTO4, so can anybody think of good a reason why  
> you would not flar the root pool into another pool and then just tar  
> off this pool each night to tape? In fact we will have so much disk  
> space (compared to now) I expect we will will be able to keep most  
> backups on-line for quite some time.
Try amanda.  It understands ZFS.
http://www.amanda.org/
  -- richard
>
>
> Discuss :-)
>
>
> -- 
> Trevor Pretty | Technical Account Manager | T: +64 9 639 0652 | M:  
> +64 21 666 161
> Eagle Technology Group Ltd.
> Gate D, Alexandra Park, Greenlane West, Epsom
> Private Bag 93211, Parnell, Auckland
> www.eagle.co.nz
> This email is confidential and may be legally privileged. If  
> received in error please destroy and immediately notify us.
>
> _______________________________________________
> zfs-discuss mailing list
> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org
> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss

On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 8:24 PM, Trevor Pretty
<trevor_pretty at eagle.co.nz> wrote:
>
> I''m persuading a customer that when he goes to S10 he should use
ZFS for
> everything. We only have one M3000 and a J4200 connected to it. We are not
> talking about a massive site here with a SAN etc. The M3000 is their
> "mainframe". His RTO and RPO are both about 12 hours, his
business gets
> difficult without the server but does not die horribly.
>
> He currently uses ufsdump to tape each night which is sent off site.
However
> "ufsrestore -i" has saved is bacon in the past and does not want
to loose
> this "functionality".
>
> A couple of questions.
>
> flar seems to work with ZFS quite well and will backup the whole root pool
> flar(1M)
>
> This seems to be the best way to get the equivalent of ufsrestore -r and a
> great way to recover in a DR event:-
> http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/submitted/flash_archive.jsp
>
> My Questions...
>
> Q: Is there the equivalent of ufsretore -i with flar? (which seems to be an
> ugly shell script around cpio or pax)
>
> Q: Therefore should I have a tar of the root pool as well?
>
> Q: There is no reason I cannot use flar on the other non root pools?
>
> Q: Or is tar better for the non root pools?
>
> We will have LOTS of disk space, his whole working dataset will easily fit
> onto an LTO4, so can anybody think of good a reason why you would not flar
> the root pool into another pool and then just tar off this pool each night
> to tape? In fact we will have so much disk space (compared to now) I expect
> we will will be able to keep most backups on-line for quite some time.
>
>
> Discuss :-)
>
>
> --
> Trevor Pretty | Technical Account Manager | T: +64 9 639 0652 | M: +64 21
> 666 161
> Eagle Technology Group Ltd.
> Gate D, Alexandra Park, Greenlane West, Epsom
> Private Bag 93211, Parnell, Auckland
>
> www.eagle.co.nz
>
> This email is confidential and may be legally privileged. If received in
> error please destroy and immediately notify us.
> _______________________________________________
> zfs-discuss mailing list
> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org
> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
>
>
With the cost of tapes, drives, and off-site storage service (unless
its stored at the owners home), you could probably co-locate a server
with fast internet connectivity, a bundle of local storage, and just
ZFS snapshot your relevant pools to that server.

I second the recommendation of Amanda from Richard as well though,
pretty flexible solution. And it can backup much more than just local
ZFS snapshots if that would be a benefit to you as well.


-- 
Brent Jones
brent at servuhome.net