ZFS gives us the ability to move data with ZFS send and receive.  This can be used to combine snapshots, create full or incremental backups, or replicate data between servers on your LAN or even over the WAN.

Local Backup with Send

This is very simple, simply perform a send of a snapshot then output it to the file, I have complicated it a bit to include a folder which is named off of the current date (as would be helpful with backups).

bash 
zfs send tank/filesystem@now > /backup/`date +%m%d%Y`/tank-filesystem.zsnd

Keep in mind zfs send only makes the backups.  In order to restore them we will need to be familiar with zfs receive as well.

Local Restore with Receive

With the basic restore it is very easy, simply specify the file system to restore to, and then define the file to pull it from.

bash 
zfs receive tank/restoredfilesystem /backup/`date +%m%d%Y`/tank-originalfilesystem.zsnd.gz

This method combines a pipe with a redirect, and will give us a compressed file.

Local Compressed Restore with Receive

Of course backups don’t do any good for us if we cannot restore them.

bash 
gunzip -c -d /backup/03152013/tank-originalfilesystem.zsnd.gz | zfs receive tank/copyfilesystem

Here we unzip the file, and pipe that into the zfs receive statement.

Local Encrypted (and Compressed) Backup with Send

Some workloads have serious security requirements.  This will encrypt and compress the contents of the file system into a backup file.  In this example I am using encrypt/decrypt to perform the encryption with aes, I also was unable to get the piping and redirection working without also injecting gzip as well.

bash 
zfs send tank/test@now | encrypt -a aes | gzip > /backup/`date +%m%d%Y`/tank-originalfilesystem.zsnd.aes.gz
Enter passphrase:
Re-enter passphrase:

Since we aren’t using any keys with encrypt it will prompt us for a passphrase.  Remember when using encryption your data becomes worthless if you do not

Local Encrypted (and Compressed) Restore with Receive

Decrypting and restoring the backup file is pretty straight forward, unzip the file, pipe it through decrypt and pipe it into zfs.

bash 
gunzip -c -d /backup/03152013/tank-originalfilesystem.zsnd.aes.gz | decrypt -a aes | zfs receive tank/copyfilesystem
Enter passphrase:

Use the passphrase that you used when encrypting the backup to decrypt it.

Remote Copy of a File System – Full Clone

Sometimes a full clone is needed from one server to another, perhaps for data migration.

bash 
zfs send tank/originalfilesystem@now | ssh root@192.168.1.21 "zfs receive tank/copyfilesystem"