[LU-17135] Inquiry Regarding MDT Backup Methods and Snapshot Reliability

• Type: Question/Request
• Resolution: Not a Bug
• Priority: Minor
• Environment: Lustre 2.15.2 on RHEL8
• Severity: 3
• Assignee: Andreas Dilger
• Reporter: BNL Team

Description

Hi,

We use device-level backup for our MDT everyday as below:

/usr/bin/dd if=/dev/sdb of=/somewhere/backup-$now bs=4096k

Additionally, we've considered the e2image command for similar device-level backups.

My question is, is there a better way to do MDT bkup? Would snapshots taken with dd or e2image be reliable for future MDT recovery? Is there a risk of encountering inconsistencies within these snapshots? If inconsistencies do arise, how should we proceed with such a snapshot?

Thank you,

Jane