[OpenIndiana-discuss] rsync & snapshot backups?

[Dan Swartzendruber]

Here's a question for y'all.  I have two linux servers I want to back up 
to my OI NAS/SAN.  What I've been playing with is a simple script that 
runs on the OI box, and does an ssh to each of the linux servers, with 
the command being an rsync back to the OI box.  rsyncd on OI is setup to 
allow connection from each specific IP for the filesystem in question.  
Each stanza in the rsyncd.conf file has a post command hook that takes a 
snapshot with the date&time on the end.  I've been googling for how 
others do this, and have found a number of competing solutions, none of 
which seem to do all of what I want.  Frex: snapadm.pl, which creates 
rolling backups on daily/weekly/monthly basis with retention times - so 
far so good, but it doesn't actually do any backing up.  I also found 
rsbackup (based on freebsd?) which does the backing up, including 
snapshotting, but doesn't seem to have any kind of snapshot expiration.  
etc etc etc...  I was even thinking of switching from text-mode OI to 
the GUI so I can install time slider - that would work if there was some 
kind of script I could tell it to run before doing the snapshot (and 
said script would run the rsyncs).  At this point, I feel like I'm 
standing out in the field trying to figure out which way to go :)  Any 
thoughts?  Thanks!