[linux-lvm] LVM snapshots and filesystem quiescence

[Tanstaafl]

Hello,

I'm totally new to LVM snapshots. I've have read the FAQ and docs and 
searched the list archives and can't find an answer to my question...

I know that you have to quiesce SQL databases using their own native 
tools if you want to have a consistent snapshot of the raw db files, but 
what about other programs like postfix or dovecot that are constantly 
(on a busy server) writing to disk? Do you need to stop these, take the 
snapshot, then restart them? Or will the filesystem itself handle this 
(similar to how VSS works on windows)?

I'm fairly certain the answer is no, I don't have to worry about these 
kinds of programs, only SQL databases.

I engage a script that simply performs a native dump of my databases 
immediately preceding the snapshot (my db's are very small and the dumps 
only take a few seconds, and this just seems much simpler to me) and 
places these files into a sql_dumps directory on the filesystem that 
will be snapshotted so these will be included in my backups, so am not 
worried about them being in a consistent state.

Thanks in advance...

Charles