Filesystem level backups?

[Steve Atkins]

Up until now I've been backing up my IMAP server by taking an atomic snapshot of the entire VM, so I've not really had to worry about it. I'm moving to hosting where I have neither VM snapshots nor a filesystem that can take snapshots, so I need to think about consistent backups a bit more.

Will a simple backup of all the files of an multi-dbox give me a consistent state when I recover, or do I need to do something (e.g. lock writes to the mailbox) while I run a backup?

(I could use doveadm backup if I were backing up to local storage I controlled, but I'm pushing it to offsite buckets so I'd prefer to avoid backing up the entire thing locally, then copying that offsite).

Cheers,
  Steve