Backup and restore of huge mailboxes

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nighthawk
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Backup and restore of huge mailboxes

Post by nighthawk »

Hi to all.

I'm migrating from 8.8.11 on a machine with Ubuntu 14.04 to the 8.8.15 on a machine with Ubuntu 18.04.

I'm facing the big problem of creating backup of account with more than 1k emails per folder. The tgz or zip file created with zmmailbox -z -m $mbox getRestURL "//?fmt=zip" or the tgz version has a very problematic structure like

Inbox
Inbox!1
Inbox!2
etc... etc..

Obviously, when restored, the other machine replicate this wrong structure.

Please keep in mind that folders (Inbox!1 Inbox!2 etc...) are not present if visiting the mailbox via webmail or mail client.

How can I solve this issue?

Any other faced this problem?

Thank you

Andrew
phoenix
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Re: Backup and restore of huge mailboxes

Post by phoenix »

Use the ZeXtras migration tool.
Regards

Bill

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nighthawk
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Re: Backup and restore of huge mailboxes

Post by nighthawk »

Hi Phoenix and thank you for your answer.

We don't need all the features of ZeXtras suite. There is the possibility to get only the migration tool?

So it is possible that there is a "huge" bug in zmmailbox backup procedure that subdivide the mails in different folders if the number of the email per folder exceed 1000mails?

Thank you

Andrew
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L. Mark Stone
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Re: Backup and restore of huge mailboxes

Post by L. Mark Stone »

nighthawk wrote:Hi Phoenix and thank you for your answer.

We don't need all the features of ZeXtras suite. There is the possibility to get only the migration tool?

So it is possible that there is a "huge" bug in zmmailbox backup procedure that subdivide the mails in different folders if the number of the email per folder exceed 1000mails?

Thank you

Andrew


To my understanding the "bugs" are in the import portion of the tgz export/import process.

You can always use IMAPSYNC as an alternative, and just export/import users' calendars and address books.

The Migration Tool is limited in functionality as you can only do an Export backup from the source (old) server, which means to avoid losing any mail, you need to quiesce Zimbra while the Export is running. Installing the Trial version of ZeXtras Suite on the source server then gets you the full ZeXtras backups, so you can be running Real Time Backups for a while, then just shut down Zimbra and do a final rsync of the backups over to the new server and start the import process near immediately.

Hope that helps,
Mark
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L. Mark Stone
Mission Critical Email - Zimbra VAR/BSP/Training Partner https://www.missioncriticalemail.com/
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nighthawk
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Re: Backup and restore of huge mailboxes

Post by nighthawk »

Thanks Mark
The bug is in the creation of backup file.

The various fancy folders are present in the tgz file so the restore procedure do what it was designed for.

I'll give a try to Zextras but I'd really want to understand how to get rid of this becouse we run a backup every day and I need that the backup are consistent and good to use.

Thanks again
nighthawk
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Re: Backup and restore of huge mailboxes

Post by nighthawk »

Seems that Zextras is not compatible with Zimbra 8.8.15.....
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Re: Backup and restore of huge mailboxes

Post by L. Mark Stone »

nighthawk wrote:Seems that Zextras is not compatible with Zimbra 8.8.15.....
What do you mean? Works fine for me.

Mark
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Klug
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Re: Backup and restore of huge mailboxes

Post by Klug »

https://forums.zextras.com/zextras-migr ... l#post8205
Officially, ZxMig is not working as an export tool for server running ZCS 8.7.11 and newer.
You have to use the ZeXtras backup tool.
However, you can export from older servers with ZxMig then import to 8.8.15.

ZeXtras by itself is very compatible with 8.8.15 8-)
nighthawk
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Re: Backup and restore of huge mailboxes

Post by nighthawk »

Hi Klug

Thank you for all the information.

So with Zextras I can migrate from 8.8.12 up to 8.8.15 without problems. Right?

Right now I'm trying to reconstruct the TGZ file by hand or with a script that let me compact all the messages in the "default" folders.

In any case I think this is a huge bug in zimbra that must be corrected... don't you think? Why a folder can't contain more than 500 messages?
Thank you
nighthawk
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Re: Backup and restore of huge mailboxes

Post by nighthawk »

There is another method of backup an installation of zimbra rather than using zmmailbox?

Thank you!
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