[Dovecot] maildir on zfs

[Frank Cusack]

On January 29, 2010 1:19:33 AM -0500 Charles Sprickman <spork at bway.net> 
wrote:
>
> Anyhow, if I find more places to run ZFS in production and it seems stable
> enough, I'd like to try getting it running on my big mailserver at some
> point.
> Backing up from UFS to ZFS using rsync is fine, but ZFS send/recv looks
> like
> a far more interesting backup solution.
>

Not for archival backups though.  The zfs send stream is not guaranteed
to be compatible with any other version of zfs than the one on the machine
that generated it.  Meaning if you have an archived send stream from 3
years ago and are trying to restore it onto a newer OS version, it might
not work.

Of course you can archive the filesystem itself, if you are backing up
to disk (that's what I do).  Future versions of zfs ARE guaranteed to
be able to read older zfs filesystems.  But if you are saving the send
stream onto tape or DVD or other media like that, as a stream, to restore
it you MIGHT need an OS with the same version of zfs on it.  zfs has
already been through several versions, but I don't know what the
compatibility of send streams between the versions are.

OK, we're really OT now! :)

-frank