# ZFS autobackup

Introduction
============

ZFS autobackup is used to periodicly backup ZFS filesystems to other locations. This is done using the very effcient zfs send and receive commands.

It has the following features:
* Automaticly selects filesystems to backup by looking at a simple ZFS property.
* Creates consistent snapshots.
* Multiple backups modes: 
 * "push" local data to a backup-server via SSH.
 * "pull" remote data from a server via SSH and backup it locally.
 * Backup local data on the same server.
* Can be scheduled via a simple cronjob or run directly from commandline.
* Backups and snapshots can be named to prevent conflicts. (multiple backups from and to the same filesystems are no problem)
* Always creates new snapshots, even if the previous backup was aborted.
* Checks everything and aborts on errors.
* Ability to 'finish' aborted backups to see what goes wrong.
* Easy to debug and has a test-mode. Actual unix commands are printed.
* Easy installation:
 * Only one host needs the zfs_autobackup script. The other host just needs ssh and the zfs command.
 * Written in python and uses zfs-commands, no 3rd party dependencys or libraries.




Example usage
=============

In this example we're going to backup a SmartOS machine called `smartos01` to our fileserver called `fs1`.

Its important to choose a uniq and consistent backup name. In this case we name our backup: `smartos01_fs1`.

Select filesystems to backup
----------------------------

On the source zfs system set the ```autobackup:smartos01_fs1``` zfs property to true.
```
[root@smartos01 ~]# zfs set autobackup:smartos01_fs1=true zones
[root@smartos01 ~]# zfs get -t filesystem autobackup:smartos01_fs1
NAME                                                PROPERTY                  VALUE                     SOURCE
zones                                               autobackup:smartos01_fs1  true                      local
zones/1eb33958-72c1-11e4-af42-ff0790f603dd          autobackup:smartos01_fs1  true                      inherited from zones
zones/3c71a6cd-6857-407c-880c-09225ce4208e          autobackup:smartos01_fs1  true                      inherited from zones
zones/3c905e49-81c0-4a5a-91c3-fc7996f97d47          autobackup:smartos01_fs1  true                      inherited from zones
...
```

Because we dont want to backup everything, we can exclude certain filesystem by setting the property to false:
```
[root@smartos01 ~]# zfs set autobackup:smartos01_fs1=false zones/backup
[root@smartos01 ~]# zfs get -t filesystem autobackup:smartos01_fs1
NAME                                                PROPERTY                  VALUE                     SOURCE
zones                                               autobackup:smartos01_fs1  true                      local
zones/1eb33958-72c1-11e4-af42-ff0790f603dd          autobackup:smartos01_fs1  true                      inherited from zones
...
zones/backup                                        autobackup:smartos01_fs1  false                     local
zones/backup/fs1                                    autobackup:smartos01_fs1  false                     inherited from zones/backup
...
```

Running zfs_autobackup
----------------------