The Sync Appliance state comprises the following elements:
The Sync Appliance can perform online backup of the two first with a minimal (sub-second) pause in the services. Backups are space-efficient: the space required for a system snapshot is typically around a few MBs regardless of the size of the main database. This is made possible by the main DB’s copy-on-write (CoW) mechanism.
Backup is performed using the built-in aeoncasectl tool.
The data backend is append-only by nature except for the occasional space recovery (garbage collection, GC) performed by an internal service. In order to backup file data, GC is suspended temporarily while data is transferred off-site. Refer to the admin manual for the full backup procedure.
The database and data backends are designed to allow efficient incremental
backups and quick recovery. Snapshots can be transferred offsite easily with
basic tools like rsync.