Backup of Scalix 9.x

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SidebandSamurai
Posts: 236
Joined: Sun Jan 08, 2006 10:57 pm

Backup of Scalix 9.x

Postby SidebandSamurai » Mon May 15, 2006 2:15 am

Hello Everyone,

I would like to do backups. Who would'nt. For now I would like to do backups for disaster recovery. I have attemtped to backup each users mail directory with one of those om commands, and was successfull, but one of my users is over 2GB. and that process took over 20 minutes. I have 3 such users in that area and it would take a long time to backup all the users data as well as backup the server.

Not to take into account that either I have to create a new mail node or have a standby system to be able to recover an individual message, its more time than what its worth. At least with a disaster backup, if they really want to pay me to restore that single message, I can still restore it if necessary, and I am backing up the data once.

I would like to outline a process and see what everyone thinks. I want to make sure that the commands I am running are the correct commnds for the following server configuration:

Redhat Fedora Core 4
1 Gig RAM
3 SATA 250G Hard Drives in RAID 5 configuration
/ = 10 Gig
/boot = 10 Meg
/var/opt/scalix = 460 Gig
2.5Ghz Pentium IV processor

Backup Server: Bacula 1.3.8 (www.bacula.org)

I am trying to keep the mail system on line as long as possible. LVM snapshots are not a vialable solution because of the LVM snapshot bug that causes kernel panics or system lock ups.

After 3 nights of research I have come to the consolution

=== Procedure ===

I will install the Bacula File Daemon on the Scalix Server so that my backup server can access the files.

At 2:00am I will shut down the mail service with the following commands (Issued from bacula when it starts the backup process)

Shutdown Web Interface

Code: Select all

/var/opt/jakarta-tomcat-5.0.28/bin/shutdown.sh


Shutdown Scalix Server

Code: Select all

service stop scalix


Bacula will backup the following directories:

Code: Select all

/var/opt/scalix
/etc


Bacula will determine automatically if its a full or an incremental and take the appropriate action.

After backup the following commands will be executed by Bacula

Start Scalix Server

Code: Select all

service start scalix


Start Web Services

Code: Select all

/var/opt/jakarta-tomcat-5.0.28/bin/startup.sh


Does anybody have any comments to confirm that this will be sufficient to backup the mail server for disaster recovery? I am open to any suggestions the community might have with my proposed procedure.

Thanks for everyones help

Sideband Samurai

ScalixSupport
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Postby ScalixSupport » Mon May 15, 2006 6:52 am

It looks OK to me, just add

/opt/scalix
/etc/opt/scalix

to the list of directories to be backed up.

I don't need to mention this, but I do it anyway. No backup can be assumed working UNLESS THE RESTORE is successful. So, to try this out, I would recommend doing the following: Grab a (free) copy of VMWare, setup the host OS, create a VM for testing with identical configuration (so you can down the Scalix server or take it off the network), copy this "virgin" OS install so that you can return to the start phase later on if things don't work.

Then, try restoring to this VM and start it up. If it all works, congratulations. If not, we can figure it out.

Cheers,

Sascha.

btisdall
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Postby btisdall » Mon May 15, 2006 8:11 am

ScalixSupport wrote:Grab a (free) copy of VMWare, setup the host OS, create a VM for testing with identical configuration


It's time I got my head around VMWare - which version do I need to download?

Cheers,
Ben Tisdall
www.redcircleit.com
London

ScalixSupport
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Joined: Thu Mar 25, 2004 8:15 pm

Postby ScalixSupport » Mon May 15, 2006 8:41 am

http://www.vmware.com/download/ws/eval.html

does it for me nicely ( I have a registered copy, of course.)

Cheers,

Sascha.

btisdall
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Postby btisdall » Mon May 15, 2006 8:50 am

Thanks Sascha.
Ben Tisdall

www.redcircleit.com

London

SidebandSamurai
Posts: 236
Joined: Sun Jan 08, 2006 10:57 pm

Postby SidebandSamurai » Mon May 15, 2006 10:35 pm

Sascha,

The VMware suggestion was an excellent Idea. I will give that a try.

Sincerely,

Sideband Samurai


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