zfs discuss - Jan 2010 - Help needed backing ZFS to tape

Hi

We have a number of customers (~150) that have a single Sun server with directly
attached storage and directly attached tape drive/library. These servers are
currently running UFS, but we are looking at deploying ZFS in future builds.

At present, we backup the server to the local tape drive using ufsdump, but
there appears to be no equivalent for ZFS. Is anyone aware why Sun have never
provided a zfsdump/zfsrestore for this sort of configuration?

Can anyone advise the best way to backup a ZFS-based server to a locally
attached tape drive? It is possible that the filesystems to backup are bigger
than a single tape, so multiple volume support is a must.

I thought about doing a "zfs send tank/fs1 at monday > /dev/rmt/0"
but this won''t manage multiple tapes. Also, I''m not sure if
this contains all the metadata required to perform a bare metal restore.

Any help much appreciated!

Thanks

JR



      
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Good question.  Zmanda seems to be a popular open source solution with
commercial licenses and support available.  We try to keep the Best Practices
Guide up to date on this topic:
http://www.solarisinternals.com/wiki/index.php/ZFS_Best_Practices_Guide#Using_ZFS_With_Enterprise_Backup_Solutions

Additions or corrections are greatly appreciated.
 -- richard

On Jan 11, 2010, at 7:13 AM, Julian Regel wrote:
> Hi
> 
> We have a number of customers (~150) that have a single Sun server with
directly attached storage and directly attached tape drive/library. These
servers are currently running UFS, but we are looking at deploying ZFS in future
builds.
> 
> At present, we backup the server to the local tape drive using ufsdump, but
there appears to be no equivalent for ZFS. Is anyone aware why Sun have never
provided a zfsdump/zfsrestore for this sort of configuration?
> 
> Can anyone advise the best way to backup a ZFS-based server to a locally
attached tape drive? It is possible that the filesystems to backup are bigger
than a single tape, so multiple volume support is a must.
> 
> I thought about doing a "zfs send tank/fs1 at monday >
/dev/rmt/0" but this won''t manage multiple tapes. Also,
I''m not sure if this contains all the metadata required to perform a
bare metal restore.
> 
> Any help much appreciated!
> 
> Thanks
> 
> JR
> 
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> zfs-discuss mailing list
> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org
> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss