[OpenIndiana-discuss] What is the recommended way to back up root pool?

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Mon, 9 Nov 2015, David Brodbeck wrote:
>
> Anyway, based on earlier comments I'm pretty sure the OP isn't interested
> in, or in a position to, pay for a subscription service.

OP == "Original Poster"?

If I am the OP, then my interest is in the best way to preserve and 
restore root pool configuration (and some user data) in case the OS 
needs to be installed with the same or a very similar OS from scratch. 
In this case it is not normally necessary or desirable to restore 
operating system binaries, but portable configuration (e.g. from an 
OpenSolaris or Illumos-based system) needs to be restored in a safe 
way.

If the root pool is not restored as a full replica (e.g. from zfs send 
stream), then it is necessary to use a package manager to install 
former required packages and apply any previous local configuration.

Are people who are backing up their root pools backing it up as a 
full replica image, or are they only capturing configuration data?

If one was to use an off-site backup like 'tarsnap', how would it be 
used to restore a root pool?

Bob
-- 
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/