Server Backup

[Shawn Bakhtiar]

> On Feb 8, 2016, at 6:19 AM, Giuseppe Ravasio (LU) via Info-cyrus <info-cyrus at lists.andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> I'm rewriting my backup script and I cannot find any hint about how to
> backup the cyrus server in a good way.
> 
> Actually I'm using this method:
> 
> - Stop Postfix and Cyrus
Although prudent, given that we have a lot of mobile devices constantly hitting our server, I don't do this step.

> - making tar of /var/lib/sieve
> - making tar of /var/lib/imap

Making tar balls of the stores can be time consuming so if I shut down the server, I would be increasing the time my servers are not responding. running an rsync to a NAS (in my case a simple network share) works much faster. Since the jobs are at night, traffic is low (running the same rsync multiple times could decrease the delta, if data integrity is important).

> - dumping mailboxes.db in plain text (ctl_mboxlist -d)
> - taking snapshots of all the mailstores
> - Restarting the Services
> - taking mailstore backups from the snapshots
> 
> The last night the imaps was not restarted because the socket for IMAPS
> was busy and so I was wondering if today it's really needed to stop the
> service before taking the snapshots.

Again this is a question of data integrity and how important the information is. In my case, given we can always re-contruct it's not an important step, I don't care (too much) if files change during the rsync process.

> Avoiding the service stop could also be useful in order to stop having a
> 1/2min downtime (I also take vmware snapshots of the machine)
> 
Correct. For us, the downtime has people calling the NOC if their devices happen to try to connect and error out. But the store can always be reconstructed if differences exists between store and db.

> I was thinking to move in this direction:
> 
> - Checkpoint and archive the databases (with ctl_cyrusdb -r)
> - making tar of /var/lib/imap
> - making tar of /var/lib/sieve
> - dumping mailboxes.db in plain text (ctl_mboxlist -d)
> - taking snapshots of all the mailstores
> - taking mailstore backups from the snapshots
> 

Sounds good to me. I would only substitute tar with rsync (your only "syncing" deltas).

> What kind of backup strategy are you using?
> Thanks
> Giuseppe
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