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.
Keeps latest X snapshots remote and locally. (default 30, configurable)
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

There are 2 ways to run the backup:

Method 1: Run the script on the backup server and pull the data from the server specfied by --ssh-source. This is usually the preferred way and prevents a hacked server from accesing the backup-data:

root@fs1:/home/psy# ./zfs_autobackup --ssh-source root@1.2.3.4 smartos01_fs1 fs1/zones/backup/zfsbackups/smartos01.server.com --verbose --compress
Getting selected source filesystems for backup smartos01_fs1 on root@1.2.3.4
Selected: zones (direct selection)
Selected: zones/1eb33958-72c1-11e4-af42-ff0790f603dd (inherited selection)
Selected: zones/325dbc5e-2b90-11e3-8a3e-bfdcb1582a8d (inherited selection)
...
Ignoring: zones/backup (disabled)
Ignoring: zones/backup/fs1 (disabled)
...
Creating source snapshot smartos01_fs1-20151030203738 on root@1.2.3.4
Getting source snapshot-list from root@1.2.3.4
Getting target snapshot-list from local
Tranferring zones incremental backup between snapshots smartos01_fs1-20151030175345...smartos01_fs1-20151030203738
...
received 1.09MB stream in 1 seconds (1.09MB/sec)
Destroying old snapshots on source
Destroying old snapshots on target
All done

Method 2: Run the script on the server and push the data to the backup server specified by --ssh-target:

./zfs_autobackup --ssh-target root@2.2.2.2 smartos01_fs1 fs1/zones/backup/zfsbackups/smartos01.server.com --verbose  --compress 
...
All done