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

[jason matthews]

At home, I do nothing for rpools. I dont even mirror them and I havent 
even written out a process for recovery. I assume I can just reinstall 
and re-import any custom xml files for smf that i have archived.

for work, i have automation to rebuild rpools but i dont back them up.

Here is one thought. Use snapshots on your rpool, synchronize one or 
more mirrors once per day on a rotation basis. once complete, split the 
mirror. I would nail the boot device in the LSI config using alt-b. this 
command sequence might be hidden depending on the version of firmware on 
your controller. make sure you are install the grub boot blocks too.

I havent tested this and the one time i actually tried to split a mirror 
the system crashed. It might be worth exploring though.


j.

On 10/28/15 4:24 PM, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
> What is the recommended approach to back up a zfs root pool?
>
> For other pools I use zfs send/receive and/or rsync-based methods.
>
> The zfs root pool is different since it contains multiple filesystems, 
> with the filesystem for one one BE being mounted at a time:
>
> % zfs list -r -t filesystem rpool
> NAME                                USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
> rpool                              79.7G   377G    50K  /rpool
> rpool/ROOT                         29.5G   377G    31K  legacy
> rpool/ROOT/openindiana             15.8M   377G  3.15G  /
> rpool/ROOT/openindiana-1           38.9M   377G  5.97G  /
> rpool/ROOT/openindiana-2           40.6M   377G  11.3G  /
> rpool/ROOT/openindiana-2-backup-1   124K   377G  10.5G  /
> rpool/ROOT/openindiana-3           48.4M   377G  13.2G  /
> rpool/ROOT/openindiana-3-backup-1    76K   377G  11.4G  /
> rpool/ROOT/openindiana-3-backup-2    45K   377G  11.5G  /
> rpool/ROOT/openindiana-3-backup-3   123K   377G  11.9G  /
> rpool/ROOT/openindiana-3-backup-4    44K   377G  12.1G  /
> rpool/ROOT/openindiana-4           20.1M   377G  18.8G  /
> rpool/ROOT/openindiana-4-backup-1    95K   377G  13.3G  /
> rpool/ROOT/openindiana-4-backup-2   156K   377G  18.8G  /
> rpool/ROOT/openindiana-5           17.5M   377G  18.9G  /
> rpool/ROOT/openindiana-6           29.4G   377G  17.6G  /
> rpool/export                        121M   377G    32K  /export
> rpool/export/home                   121M   377G    32K /export/home
>
> This means that there are multiple filesystems which would need to be 
> backed up in order to save a replica of the pool.
>
> At the moment I am using rsync-based backup of only selected filesystems.
>
> It is not clear to me where configuration due to utilities like 
> 'ipadm' and 'dladm' is stored, but I am pretty sure it is to files 
> under the /etc directory.
>
> What is recommended/common practice for backing up the root pool?
>
> Bob