jvsalo / zfs_transfer

Maintain a mirror of ZFS pools over the network

zfs_transfer

Maintain a mirror of ZFS pools over the network.

Best used together with https://github.com/zfsonlinux/zfs-auto-snapshot set up on the remote host. It should be possible to chain multiple ZFS hosts.

Below is a crontab usage example. Here the various datasets and snapshots from the host 192.168.1.14 are replicated to our local ZFS pool, using SSH (-o Compression=no -c arcfour) and caching (mbuffer) optimizations.

Parent datasets are automatically created before the initial synch, when you add a dataset.

We use 'zfs hold' to implement locking that prevents destruction of remote snapshots, that would put the synchronization process in danger.

This allows for laid-back snapshot expiry management on the remote host, since a lot of force (you need to remove the hold tag) is required to destroy the latest mutually known snapshot.

The script should be quite tolerant against various failure conditions. If you can make it better, please do!

In below crontab, the remote pool is called "backuppool", and the local site is "offsite".

The "Keep days" parameter only destroys local (offsite) snapshots. It makes sure that a hold is released, if exists, on the remote host before it goes on to destroy a local snapshot. Failure to do so, would disturb snapshot expiry on the remote host indefinitely!

MAILTO="[email protected]"
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin

0 0  1   *   *     zpool scrub offsite

#                                    Hostname            Remote dataset                          Local dataset                          Hold tag       Keep days
# m h  dom mon dow   command         ------------        --------------------------------------- -------------------------------------- -------------- ------------
0 */6 *  *   *     zfs_replicate   -h 192.168.1.14    -r backuppool/virt/machines             -l offsite/virt/machines               -t offsite     -k 30
10 */6 *  *   *     zfs_replicate   -h 192.168.1.14    -r backuppool/backuppc                  -l offsite/backuppc                    -t offsite     -k 30
20 */6 *  *   *     zfs_replicate   -h 192.168.1.14    -r backuppool/timemachine               -l offsite/timemachine                 -t offsite     -k 30
50 */6 *  *   *     zfs_replicate   -h 192.168.1.14    -r backuppool/vdp                       -l offsite/vdp                         -t offsite     -k 30

zfs_transfer's Issues

'pigz' reported as not installed when -P/--no-pigz option given

$ sudo zfstx -P -b 512M localhost:tank/os victory/tank/os
ERROR: 'pigz' is not installed. Install it, or use --no-pigz.

And zfstx exits. Strangely, pigz is installed, and is actually used when no '-P' option is given.

Expected behavior: Pigz will be disabled. Might want to also consider just disabling pigz for localhosts as well. Keeping it enabled is likely a detriment to performance in virtually every case.

BTW, thank you. Finally a simple set of tools for this!