Starting a Backup Session

When ZCS was installed, a backup schedule was automatically added to the cron table. The default full backup is scheduled for 1:00 A.M. every Sunday. The default incremental backups are scheduled for 1:00 A.M. Monday through Saturday. You can also run the backup at any time from Backups.

From the administration console, you can run the following backup sessions on the mailbox server

Full backup is usually run as asynchronous.  The backup continues in the background. The Status column shows if a backup is running or has ended. Click Refresh to update the Status column.

To start a backup session
  1. Click Backups in the navigation pane. When the Backup content pane opens, click Backup on the tool bar. The Immediate Backup dialog opens.

  2. Select the source server from the drop-down list.

  3. Select whether to run a Full or Incremental backup.

  4. The path to save the backup session is /opt/zimbra/backup. The default directory for the backups is on the same mail server that is being backed up.  Unless you are saving to a separate disk drive, you can accept the default.

  5. Click Next.

If you selected to run a Full backup, you must select the accounts to backup.

If you selected to run an Incremental backup, all accounts are backed up.

  1. The Running the backup dialog displays the session label. Click Finish to close the dialog.  The backup session continues in background.