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An alternate backup system?

Posted: Fri Apr 28, 2006 10:01 pm
by Sneeper
So after being scared by the SUR process and thinking about it more, would it be possible to do this instead:

-Take a snapshot every night and backup. In case of catastrophic failure, you can always roll back all of /var/opt/scalix to the snapshot.

-In case a user deleted messages or had corrupted containers:

1) Restore snapshot of /var/opt/scalix to an *alternate server*. (Alternate server has same /opt/scalix software installed.) Then start scalix on alternate server.

2) Connect to alternate Scalix system with user's email client, and copy over messages to original Scalix server.

3) Disconnect. Stop scalix on alternate scalix server.


Basically, you'd have a standby scalix install on another system that you can restore.. this lets users copy over messages easily if they ever delete messages.

Would this kind of system work?

Posted: Sat Apr 29, 2006 6:17 am
by btisdall
That's definitely possible - such an approach is detailed here:

http://www.scalix.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=1271

The only difference is it's using rsync rather than LVM snapshots as the backup method.

Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 12:51 pm
by Sneeper
Ah thank you for the link.

On the secondary scalix system, I guess I really only want the IMAP service running.. I don't want it processing any messages or anything (like if there were messages in the outgoing queue).

Which services need to be running to get functional IMAP going?

--Andy

Posted: Tue May 02, 2006 7:07 am
by ScalixSupport
I'd think about it another way. Disable all services you don't need, e.g. sendmail, local delivery, service router and unix.

Cheers,

Sascha.