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

[jason matthews]

zfs split may also be undocumented depending on your distribution.

j.

On 10/28/15 5:08 PM, jason matthews wrote:
>
>
> 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
>