ZnapZend is a ZFS centric backup tool to create snapshots and send them to backup locations. It relies on the ZFS tools snapshot, send and receive to do its work. It has the built-in ability to manage both local snapshots as well as remote copies by thinning them out as time progresses.
This is free and open source software.
Features include:
- Consistent snapshots – uses the built-in snapshot functionality of ZFS for fully consistent backups. For each fileset, a pre- and post-snapshot command can be configured to quiet down any software writing to the fileset prior to snapshotting
- Fileset-based configuration – stores all its configuration in custom ZFS properties. So all configuration is hooked right into the ZFS fileset structure. When you modify the fileset, rename it, remove it, ZnapZend will happily chug along. ZnapZend comes with a special tool for setting and checking the backup configuration.
- Flexible backup locations – uses the ZFS send/receive functionality to transfer backups to remote locations. It employs ssh and (optionally) mbuffer for the transfer to achieve optimal transfer rates for the data. You can configure any number of remote destinations for a fileset. Even no destinations at all if all you need are well managed local snapshots
- Progressive – can be configured to remove snapshots as they get older. The configuration allows to easily setup schemes where the backup density is progressively reduced as the backups get older. This technique can be individually applied both to the local snapshots as well as to any remote locations.
- Online backup scheduler – runs as a service and uses the Mojo::IOLoop for scheduling all snapshotting and data transfer activities. Even when a snapshot takes a long time to transfer, snapshots on the source fileset will continue to be created according to schedule. Multiple snapshots will be transferred as a group to catch up slow destinations.
- Portable – s fully configurable in how it names its snapshots. Switching from your current ZFS snapshotting tool to ZnapZend is pretty simple. ZnapZend is highly portable and is known to work on all OSes that support ZFS: Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, OmniOS, SmartOS, MacOS.
Website: www.znapzend.org
Support: GitHub Code Repository
Developer: Tobias Oetiker
License: GNU General Public License v3.0
ZnapZend is written in Perl. Learn Perl with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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