Cyrus Backup Strategy

[pnelson]

My last thing to do prior to converting to production is a backup
strategy.  I have been doing this with tar something like:

tar -C /var/lib    -czf lib-<date>.tar.gz    imap
tar -C /var/spool  -czf spool-<date>.tar.gz  imap
tar -cf cyrus-<date>.tar

This is producing a pretty big file(s):

 lib-<date>.tar.gz    ->   2.2M
 spool-<date>.tar.gz  ->  11.0M

and ultimately

 cyrus-<date>.tar     ->  13.5M 

and I was thinking maybe there is a better way that someone else has
come up with.  Anyone doing backups a different way?