[Ubuntu 20.04] ZFS file system machine backup

[showiproute]

Hello everyone,

I migrated my storage HDD from EXT4 to ZFS as it has some nice features.
Unfortunately I recoginized that Veeam Agent for Linux does no longer backup that vovlume.

Any suggestions what to do?

Thanks!

[PetrM]

Hello,

The only idea which comes to my mind is to leverage snapshot-less file-level backup.

Thanks!

[showiproute]

Ahoj Petr,

thanks for your feedback - I see and had the feeling that I would need to change that.
Okay so as I understand as soon as I would use a ZFS file system Veeams Linux agent will not be able to do an "Entire machine" backup.

[PTide]

@showiproute,

Not sure whether that was a question, but I confirm that snapshot-less file-level backup does not back up the entire machine - it just grabs files that you tell it to.

Thanks!

[showiproute]

Hello @PTide,

yes indirectly it answers my question.
I set up a new backup job on a snapshot-less file-level with my important files.

Are there any plans to have ZFS filesystems include in a "Entire machine" backup?

Thanks you both!

[mikeely]

Right now we simply can't use Veeam Agent to back up our busier servers with ZFS. I can go snapshot-less file based but it's terrifically slow and because it's not using snaps the backups are not actually usable.

Veeamsnap for the OS, and the agent can leverage builtin ZFS snapshotting for the zpools as well. It's really needed.

[HannesK]

Hello,
I would not expect Veeam Agent for Linux having an integration with ZFS in any foreseeable future as it is an edge-case scenario. And yes, the no-snap agent is not built to back up hundreds of TB filers with hundreds of millions or billions of files.

I would expect NAS backup (use the Linux machine as file server) being a good choice for the job if you point it to a ZFS static snapshot path. What do you think?

Best regards
Hannes

[mikeely]

I'd suggest that ZFS on Linux is becoming somewhat less of an edge case, and also that it's finding utility in a lot of areas beyond NAS type of applications. In the case of the system I'm working on right now, for example, the zpool hosts a very busy mysql database. I didn't engineer this box so I can't speak to why it was implemented this way, but I can say the database is perfectly healthy and performant.

Another example is, of course, the fact that Proxmox natively supports ZFS /boot partitions.

What I'm seeing is that ZFS is being used in a lot of places where btrfs was originally intended, but the defects of that filesystem have led people to start using ZFS instead.

[HannesK]

Hello,
I merged your question to one of the (few) other threads threads that asked for it. Let's see how many more requests we get.

Proxmox: I'm not sure what would be backed up from a Proxmox host, but Veeam Agent for Linux with nosnap should be able to do that.
database server: I don't know how big it is and how slow Veeam Agent for Linux was, but it feels like that it should be okay-ish because database files should be not too small. same as with NAS backup: it would need to be pointed to a snapshot path.

Best regards
Hannes

[mikeely]

As Veeam supports btrfs, it's worth pointing out that the concepts for ZFS are very similar. ZFS is just... better.