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

[Ian Collins]

Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> 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?

I use a two level backup/DR strategy.

1) Replicate the entire pool so a system can be rebuilt "as is" if 
something goes horribly wrong.

2) Make /etc a mercurial repository and push it to another host. This 
allows me to track file changes and quickly recover if I stuff something 
up.

-- 
Ian.