Manual Backup Process for Zimbra ZCS Open Source

Bold indicates a button clicked or key pressed.
“quotes” indicates a value which has been entered.

Grey block quote is a command typed directly into the console.

Manual Backup of Zimbra

1.Gain root shell access to the Zimbra box

#su

#’Your Password’

Stop Zimbra Services from running in order to perform a cold backup. This is necessary so the database and ZCS stay synced. Depending on your installation size,  your server may be down for up to 10 minutes. Generally, for a decent sized install with approximately 150 users, the server will only be down for 4-6 minutes.

#sudo -u zimbra /opt/zimbra/bin/zmcontrol stop

3.Make a backup directory and Sync Zimbra Directory to backup directoy

#cd /
#mkdir backup
#cd backup
#mkdir zimbra
#rsync -avHK /opt/zimbra/ /backup/zimbra

4.Restart Zimbra services

#sudo -u zimbra /opt/zimbra/bin/zmcontrol start

5.Create archived backup for offsite transfer via FTP

#tar -zcvf /tmp/mail.backup.gz -C /backup/zimbra .

6.Finally, send the archive backup to an FTP backup server. The username and password should be entered without any quotes.  In addition, replace IPADDRESS with your ftp server.

#ncftpput -u ’username -p ’password’ IPADDRESS /mail /tmp/mail.backup.gz