This is a clone from bitbucket.org/mmichele/zfssnap

If you like this tool, Watch It on Bitbucket. If you love it, make a $10 donation to the FreeBSD foundation. If you don't like it, open a ticket and explain what can be improved.

This is a minimalistic utility to fully automate backups for systems using the outstanding ZFS filesystem.

It relies on Snapshots to provide:

• local backups – they help you recover files from earlier in time.
• remote backups – they help you recover whole datasets for system failures.

ZFS snapshots are extremely lightweight on the system (actually cheaper to take snapshot than not!) and cheap on storage (only changed blocks are saved) and allow you to restore files from past versions.

You run these tools from cron to periodically

• take ZFS snapshots (zfssnap.sh)
• serialize and export them remotely (zfsbk.sh)

The tools take care of limiting the number of snapshots, so you do not have to periodically prune old snapshots.

Snapshots can be named so you can create groups of them, e.g. "hourly snapshots", "newdeplo snapshots" and "exported snapshots".

An additional tool takes care of exporting such snapshots, and uploading them to a remote server.

Installation:

1. place all *.sh files of the package into directory /usr/local/sbin/

2. (if you'll use remote backups) create a dataset to store backups:

   zfs create zroot/backups # replace 'zroot' with your pool name

Done! Is your ZFS pool name other than zroot? Then set the ZPOOL environment variable to your zpool name when calling these scripts. See below for more.

Need to control multiple ZFS pools? See section "Managing multiple ZFS Pools" below.

You run zfssnap.sh for taking snapshots, typically from cron:

vim /etc/crontab ...
# take hourly snapshot, keep 24 of them
@hourly     root    /usr/local/sbin/zfssnap.sh hour 24

This will create, every hour, a new ZFS snapshot tagged 'hour':

# ls /.zfs/snapshot/
zbk-hour-20140318-140000
zbk-hour-20140318-150000
zbk-hour-20140318-160000

Only 24 of these snapshots will be kept (see Rotation below). The name of each snapshot comes with format zbk-[tag]-[date]-[time]. Date is YYYYMMDD and time is hhmmss.

Each snapshot is tagged:

# create a snapshot tagged 'foobar'. Maintain 10 at all times
zfssnap.sh foobar 10

Snapshots with the same tag make a snapshot group. For example, the foobar group will count up to 10 members at all times.

Multiple groups can exist, just take snapshots with different tags:

# take 2 'hourly' snaps
zfssnap.sh hourly 10
zfssnap.sh hourly 10
# take 3 'daily' snaps
zfssnap.sh daily 10
zfssnap.sh daily 10
zfssnap.sh daily 10
# ls /.zfs/snapshot
zfs-hourly-20140318-140001
zfs-hourly-20140318-140003
zfs-daily-20140318-140111
zfs-daily-20140318-140112
zfs-daily-20140318-140114

Neither zfssnap.sh nor ZFS put a limit on the number of snaps you can maintain. The tool was tested with over 200. Bear in mind that it's shell scripts, so inherent limitations of arguments length could get in your way.

I recommend staying under 50 snaps per group and 200 snaps total.

zfssnap.sh takes a new snapshot every time it's run. When the number of existing snapshots exceeds the given limit, the oldest snapshot of that group (tag) is removed, so only so many are kept:

# take snap xyz, then keep only last 2 from xyz group
zfssnap.sh xyz 2

This bounds the number of snapshots for each group to 2. To remove all snaps in a group, simply pass ''i'' as limit:

# remove all snaps of group xyz
zfssnap.sh xyz 0

zfssnap.sh takes a recursive backup of the zroot pool. If you do not intend to maintain backups for certain datasets, you can exclude them with the EXCLUDES and EXTRA_EXCLUDES environment variables:

# exclude only these datasets
EXCLUDES=“/mydataset/foobar"
# exclude these datasets in addition to default exclusions
EXTRA_EXCLUDES=“/mydataset/foobar"

Notice that these are dataset names, not mountpoints! If dataset zroot/foo is at mountpoint /bar, specify /foo here.

The following datasets, common for FreeBSD users, are excluded by default:

• /usr/ports
• /usr/src

If you do not want these excluded, pass an empty EXCLUDES envvar.

Lost a file? Find it under:

# list content of michele's home at 2pm (1400)
ls /.zfs/snapshot/zbk-hour-140000/home/michele

Notice that you must look for the /.zfs directory at the root of the dataset actually holding it:

# list content of michele's home, if /home is on zroot/home
ls /home/.zfs/snapshot/zbk-hour-140000/michele

# take 15' backups for the last hour
*/15 * * * * root /usr/local/sbin/zfssnap.sh qrt 4
# take hourly backups for the 6 hours
1 * * * * root /usr/local/sbin/zfssnap.sh hourly 6
# take 6-hours backups for the last day
1 */6 * * * root /usr/local/sbin/zfssnap.sh 6hr 4
# take daily backups for the last week
1 1 * * * root /usr/local/sbin/zfssnap.sh day 7
# take weekly backups for the last 2 months
1 1 * * 1 root /usr/local/sbin/zfssnap.sh week 8

The zfsbk.sh lets you generate backups and upload them to a remote location.

This takes a snapshot with tag mybk and serializes it in file /backups/zbk-mybk-140000.dump:

# generate ZFS streaming package, save to /backups folder
/usr/local/sbin/zfsbk.sh mybk
ls /backups
zfs-mybk-20140318-061900.dump

Pass a number to zfsbk.sh and it will create incremental snapshots:

# 1. make full replication if this is the first snap in group
# 2. else make incremental replication wrt latest snap in group
# 3. reset the snap group after 1+9 steps have been made
/usr/local/sbin/zfsbk.sh mybk 10

Incremental packages are named after their snapshot endpoints:

ls /backups
zbk-mybk-20140318-140000--zbk-mybk-20140318-150000.dump

If the given integer is 1, zfsbk.sh sends full replication packages for every run.

zfsbk.sh can upload each replication package after generating it, at the end of the run.

Pass the destination coordinates with the UPLOAD_PATH environment variable. Currently, rsync:// and scp:// are supported:

# take snap, generate backup, upload it to remote server
UPLOAD_PATH="rsync://[email protected]::server12/" /usr/local/sbin/zfsbk.sh mybk 10

zfsbk.sh relies on zfssnap.sh to take the snapshot to backup. Therefore, you can exclude different datasets from its backup by passing the respective EXCLUDES or EXTRA_EXCLUDES variables:

# take selective backup
EXTRA_EXCLUDES="/jails/test.dom.com" /usr/local/sbin/zfsbk.sh mybk 1

zfsbk.sh maintains serialized backups in directory /backups after having uploaded them. If you want to cleanup the backup file locally after uploading it upstream, set the CLEAR_BKFILE environment variable to a non-empty value. zfsbk.sh will maintain the local backup regardless of this variable if the upload failed.

# delete generated bkfile locally after successful upload
UPLOAD_PATH="..." CLEAR_BKFILE=yep /usr/local/sbin/zfsbk.sh mybk 7

Ask zfsbk to remove an old sequence remotely before uploading a new one:

# remove all bkfiles of old sequence *remotely* before uploading new one
UPLOAD_PATH="..." DELETE_OUTDATED="yep" /usr/local/sbin/zfsbk.sh mybk 7

This allows you to cap the size taken by backups at the remote.

Simply run these scripts once for each pool, setting the ZPOOL environment variable accordingly.

Here's all environment variables controlling the behavior or zfssnap and zfsbk:

• ZPOOL [str] name of the ZFS pool to operate on.
• EXCLUDES [str] space-separated list of dataset names to exclude from snapshots. Overrides defaults.
• EXTRA_EXCLUDES [str] space-separated list of dataset names to exclude from snapshots in addition to defaults.

• UPLOAD_PATH [str] Upload generated bkfile to this remote location; 'scp://' or 'rsync://'
• CLEAR_BKFILE [any] If non-empty, remove copy of generated bkfile after successful remote upload.
• DELETE_OUTDATED [any] If non-empty, remove old backup sequence remotely before uploading first bkfile of a new sequence.

By using this software you release the author(s) from any claim.

You are aware that working with filesystems is dangerous and exposes to complete data loss. This script has been written with care for reliability, tested for a number of scenarios, and used in a number of servers.

Because of the inherently partial nature of testing, you are aware that this brings no guarantees that it'll work for your scenario.

Careful yourself when working with ZFS snapshots! Check this out:

# CAREFUL ! These commands destroy your FS !

zfs destroy -r zroot@mysnap     # destroy snapshot 'mysnap' from pool 'zroot'
zfs destroy -r zroot#mysnap     # destroy all system data, and comment it's 'mysnap'
# notice that # and @ are next to each other on most keyboards.
# Sun made a poor choice, or they are adrenaline junkies.

Copyright (c) 2014-present, Michele Mazzucchi All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

• 20141214 zfsbk.sh: Envvar snapdir added