1. Backing up Zarafa Collaboration Platform
with Veeam SureBackup
Joep Piscaer, VMware vExpert, VCDX #101
j.piscaer@virtuallifestyle.nl
@jpiscaer

2. Agenda
 Introduction
 What is backup application consistency
and why is it so important?
 Evaluating Zarafa ZCP components
and relevance to application consistency
 What options to backup Zarafa ZCP are available
within Veeam Backup & Replication?
 Integrating application consistency into SureBackup
 Demo

3. Agenda
 Introduction
 What is backup application consistency
and why is it so important?
 Evaluating Zarafa ZCP components
and relevance to application consistency
 What options to backup Zarafa ZCP are available
within Veeam Backup & Replication?
 Integrating application consistency into SureBackup
 Demo

4. Introduction
 Joep Piscaer
● Consulting Architect at OGD ict-diensten
● VMware VCDX5 #101, vExpert 2009, 2011, 2012
● Know Veeam since 2007 and in love with them ever since
(best. VMworld. parties. ever.)

5. Past Projects
 Past implementations of Veeam B&R
● Commonly see a VMware virtualization layer with Windows VMs on top
● But my own company uses Linux-based applications internally
 Notable projects include
● Bi-directional DR for 200-250 VMs with 2 infrastructures
● 150+ VM backup and replication within a single large datacenter
● Application consistent backups of Zarafa Collaboration Platform without
bringing database down (or any other downtime)
● Numerous smaller projects for DR or backup at customer sites

6. Agenda
 Introduction
 What is backup application consistency
and why is it so important?
 Evaluating Zarafa ZCP components
and relevance to application consistency
 What options to backup Zarafa ZCP are available
within Veeam Backup & Replication?
 Integrating application consistency into SureBackup
 Demo

7. Consistency states
 Crash consistency
“A crash consistent state does not have any quiescing and is
equivalent to a VM being powered off without being properly
shutdown.”
 Filesystem consistency
“A file system consistent state is better because the operating system
is in a proper state to be backed up.”
 Application consistency
“Finally, the best state is application consistent where applications
have also been properly prepared for backup.”

8. Why is application consistency important?
 A consistent application (or transactional) state is
important, because:
 It will prevent data loss or data corruption
 It will improve RTO significantly for large data sets

9. How to force consistency?
 Quiescing the VM, filesystem and/or application:
Pause VM and write all the transactional data
in memory to disk
 Forces the state of the disk image to be
consistent, preventing data corruption or lengthy crash
recovery checks on filesystems and databases

10. Agenda
 Introduction
 What is backup application consistency
and why is it so important?
 Evaluating Zarafa ZCP components
and relevance to application consistency
 What options to backup Zarafa ZCP are available
within Veeam Backup & Replication?
 Integrating application consistency into SureBackup
 Demo

11. Zarafa components
 Zarafa application components
● Core applications, WebAccess / WebApp, Z-Admin, postfix, Z-
Push, spamassassin, clamav, amavis, etc
 MySQL database for metadata
and a file based content system
 Authentication directory
 DNS

12. Backing up Zarafa – What’s the big deal?
 The application components or dependencies
are not the actual issue
We can rely on file system journal to recover data from
these application components
 But the MySQL database is
It needs to be application-consistent instead of crash or
filesystem consistent

13. Agenda
 Introduction
 What is backup application consistency
and why is it so important?
 Evaluating Zarafa ZCP components
and relevance to application consistency
 What options to backup Zarafa ZCP are available
within Veeam Backup & Replication?
 Integrating application consistency into SureBackup
 Demo

14. Hot Backup of MySQL on a Linux VM
 Two options to produce a transaction consistent backup of
MySQL databases:
● Option 1 stops the database and
application; all caches are lost
and need to be rebuilt; too big
a performance hit and impacts
service availability
● Options 2 produces a full copy
of the database, which is not
storage-friendly, and takes a
considerable amount of time.
Restore requires additional steps.

15. Hot Backup of MySQL on a Linux VM
 Both options are not viable in our environment.
 We can‟t stop the database or application for each backup:
● For service availability reasons
● Because the built-up caches for database and applications would be
lost, severely impacting application performance.
 We cannot create a dump of the database:
● It would take too long with a big impact on storage (IOps and capacity)
● Restoring data from the dump requires additional steps

16. Hot Backup of MySQL on a Linux VM
 We came up with a 3rd option:
 Option 3. Lock database tables and flush to disk.
No downtime or service availability impact
No need to rebuild cache or create an entire copy of the
database.
 Flushes all open tables in the database to disk while
preventing any changes to databases

17. Hot Backup of MySQL on a Linux VM
 One problem though:
“Script can‟t quit the mysql shell else you will lose the lock”
 This does not play nice with pre-freeze and
post-thaw scripts; since the pre-freeze script
quits and loses the lock…
 Jelmer Jaarsma to the rescue!
My colleague found
a work-around

18. pre-freeze-script.sh
 Create two temporary lock files and launch background
script. Pre-freeze script will run until database is locked.
 Background script will flush tables to disk and write-lock
database. Finally, it removes a temporary lock file.
This signals the pre-freeze script that the database is
ready for snapshotting; the script terminates without error
 With the pre-freeze script terminated, Veeam will now
create the snapshot (with the database locked)

19. post-thaw-script.sh
 During the snapshot creation, the background script is still
running, keeping the database locked.

20. post-thaw-script.sh
 After the snapshot has been successfully created, the
post-thaw script removes the 2nd temporary lock file. This
will shut down the background script, unlocking the
database and continuing normal database operation
 No downtime; just a couple of seconds database
query queue

21. Veeam backup job settings
 There‟s no specific settings
inside the job
 Enable VMware Tools quiescence
 No „post job activity‟ in the
backup jobs settings
 No application-aware
image processing (VSS)

22. Agenda
 Introduction
 What is backup application consistency
and why is it so important?
 Evaluating Zarafa ZCP components
and relevance to application consistency
 What options to backup Zarafa ZCP are available
within Veeam Backup & Replication?
 Integrating application consistency into SureBackup
 Demo

23. Backup and recovery verification
 Transactionally consistent backups need to be verified
periodically to meet RPO and other SLA goals
 Testing a restore manually is a painfully long and hard
process; it should include tests on all layers
(VM, filesystem, application)
 The only real verification is to bring the VM back online in a
safe and isolated environment
 Can be used to restore granular application items, too

24. Integrate Zarafa into SureBackup
 Add a new role to SureBackup using ZarafaServer.xml
http://forums.veeam.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=15103&p=69768
 Create a Virtual Lab
 Create appropriate application groups
(including any dependencies like LDAP, DNS)
and select both „mail server‟ and „zarafa server‟ boxes

25. Restoring Zarafa
 It‟s Linux; please prepare your VM‟s NIC settings
accordingly
static MAC address or retain IP after MAC changes
 Full VM recovery does not need any manual steps
● the database is in a consistent state (no crash recovery)
and ready to go (no need to restore from a dump file)

26. Restoring Zarafa
 Single Object Restore / Single Mail Restore
http://forums.veeam.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=15103&p=69768
● Add server to Managed Servers for File Copy
Advanced - Preferred TCP Connection Role - "Run Server on this side“
● Use U-AIR to boot up VM
● Extract an User:
/usr/bin/zarafa-backup -a -v -u max -o /var/backup/
● Use Veeam File Copy to restore files to production
● Restore User
/usr/share/zarafa-backup/full-restore.sh max

27. Agenda
 Introduction
 What is backup application consistency
and why is it so important?
 Evaluating Zarafa ZCP components
and relevance to application consistency
 What options to backup Zarafa ZCP are available
within Veeam Backup & Replication?
 Integrating application consistency into SureBackup
 Demo

28. Live Demo

29. Q&A
Joep Piscaer
VMware vExpert, VCDX #101
j.piscaer@virtuallifestyle.nl
@jpiscaer
Add Jelmer Jaarsma to LinkedIn:
http://nl.linkedin.com/pub/jelmer-jaarsma/8/456/717