Create zfsnap send about zfsnap HOT 12 OPEN

Project is stagnating due to lack of active maintainers.
@aqw I propose we create issue and let folks apply to become new maintainers of project.

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I am waiting for it 👍

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This might exist best as a separate utility / script. There are plenty of organizations that will never ever ever permit their (production / out front / DZM hosts) to connect to the backup hosts. In plenty of cases, it would be impossible (whether technically or politically) to do so.

In most cases, the backup software is permitted to connect to any / all hosts. In my idea case, the backup software drives the shipping of the snapshots from $production hosts to backup hosts, ala:

$backup_host # ssh prodhost 'zfsnap-getter -opts fs_name' | zfs receive -opts zvol/zsnaps

In this case, "Automatically determine the most recent zfsnap snapshot" is quite easy, and so too would "not require zfsnap be installed on the destination server," as only a zfsend / zfship / zfsnap-getter agent would be needed. In the very common use case of a production host with small fast SSDs and big slow spinners for Nearline Backups, the zfsnap-getter can also run locally.

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I can only strongly agree with Matt. A connection backup-host to to-be-backed-up host would have a much greater acceptance.

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@neuhalje I have a script that does this if there is interest. It might be confusing as I have noticed there already has been a script submitted for this for 2.1 #20 although it pushes zfs snapshots rather than pulling them as you suggest.

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I'd also like this feature. My use case is that I am using zfsnap (2.0 beta) to make snapshots. I have an external hard drive with a zfs pool that I would like to sync all those snapshots too. I'd like zfsnap to automatically figure out what snapshots are not available on the "remote" pool and move them over using send/receive.

A few thoughts:

• it might be helpful if the command would work in both directions. From a security perspective, push connections give you the benefit that a single server (the backup-storage server) doesn't have access to multiple other devices. But other orgs are going to need a pull setup due to firewall issues. I think you are going to see both setups in practice.
• I think the idea here to use limit ssh access with a wrapper (see https://github.com/jgoerzen/simplesnap simplesnapwrap) is really important to limit the damage possible, due to the need for root access, if either side of the connection gets compromised.
• I'd like to see the tool also be able to work locally (no SSH, both pools are on the backed-up system)
• Eventually, it would be helpful to have a way to specify different retention periods for the local and remote sides. But, fwiw, I'd rather have a functioning send command first.

Other resources related to this idea for reference:

• http://wiki.complete.org/ZFSAutoSnapshots (links out to multiple other places)
• http://www.znapzend.org/ (does a lot, Perl)
• https://github.com/mk01/zfs-auto-snapshot
• http://www.bolthole.com/solaris/zrep/

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@rsyring Just an observation, but I don’t think root access is required (on FreeBSD, at least). It is possible to grant a non-root backup user backup-user permission to send and hold snapshots for a filesystem or volume. e.g.

zfs allow backup-user send zroot
zfs allow backup-user hold zroot

(The zfs allow command is pretty flexible – see the man page for details.)

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Ok I have uploaded the scripts I use here. Some of the stuff is probably pretty ugly, but it works, I would love to hear any suggestions for improvements. The zfs_backup.sh script is the relevant backups pulled by backup server script.
Some improvements that need to be made to make this stuff more generalized is taking in options, using methods, support for other transfer methods beyond ssh.
Sorry @rsyring my scripts assume we are working with multiple ZFS systems and use key based ssh. But what I have could possibly be a starting point for you. Local systems pretty much have their problems solved already just using zfs send pool/fs | zfs receive poolb. All you have to do from there is use something like the for loops and if compare I use to identify common snaps to send incrementals in an automated fashion.

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What's the state of this one? Will #83 be merged?

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@graudeejs I agree. That would be great. :-)

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Opened #109

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Is the only use case for this to have the software figure out which snapshots don't yet exist on the target server? Or is there more to what this feature does?

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