hi,

I am unclear on which do I backup. Do I backup the lvm logical filesystem or the mounted snapshot directory? signed confused...

What do you mean by which do you back-up? What are you using to do the back-ups.

How are you looking at backing up the lvm logical filesystem? backing up the entire filesystem would be better from a bare metal restore perspective but you need to make sure you back-up everything and not just the COW file/data. doing it from a mounted directory maybe easier however and would mean you are doing file level back-ups instead, it'd make doing a bare metal restore a much longer process but restoring individual files maybe easier, based on what you are using to do the back-ups.

The reason for taking a snap is to get a point-in-time consistent image of the filesystem. Back that up.
In all likelihood the base filesystem will be changing continually, so is inappropriate as a backup source.

I found the answer too doing more searches. It is the mounted snapshot that I make the backup from.

Maybe I misunderstood, I thought you were talking about actually just copying the logical volume of the snapshot itself.

Anyways, depending on what you are doing, a snapshot alone might not be enough. For example, if you are using mysql/mariadb, then you'd also have to take the step of read-locking the entire thing prior to creating the snapshot, once the snapshot is created you can kill the global read-lock. In short, always make sure your back-up method is appropriate to the task you are doing.

Isn't the purpose of a snapshot is to make a backup of the system while users are still doing their usual business on the system. Also from what I read, backing up from the snapshot allows mysql or other services to remain active as users read and write to it. Also, I read the snapshot is just to hold changes that are being made in the filesystem you made a snapshot of.

Keep that in mind, after which you can do whatever is appropriate.
Do you require referential integrity, can you withstand the time delay of trans roll-back during restore ... ? All sorts of issues pop up.

For non-DB filesystems, the system handles freezing the I/O - snaps are a no-brainer in that case. As for only holding "changes", the snap actually holds the unchanged (initial) version of any data that changes subsequent to the snap being taken. Hence they can grow over time. However it has reference to the entire filesystem, so you can take a full backup using the snap.

Snaps are in themselves not a robust backup - but they are excellent sources for backups.

I am new to LVM so I can't debate on the proper usage or any prerequisite to be done before doing the snapshots. You both can be right. There are tons of info on LVMs and some are dated too. Maybe I'll practice LVM snapshots on a spare desktop.