Best Practice for backing up running Virtual Machines

[Christian Reiter]

Hello!

I am wondering what's the best way to backup a running xen-domU.

I've just tried to simply copy the file of a file-backed domU while it 
was running.
Surprisingly that  was succesful, i didn't even get a filesystem error....

 But i think that is not a reliable way for production servers.

What would you recommend to get reliable disaster recovery backups
of file-backed as well as partition-backed (raw partition or lvm 
volumes) vms?

Mit freundlichen Grüßen,  ///  Kind Regards,
                                                 Christian Reiter



-- 

Christian Reiter	|||	c.reiter(a)gmx.net

[Lamont R. Peterson]

On Wednesday 03 May 2006 03:59pm, Christian Reiter wrote:
>  Hello!
>
>  I am wondering what's the best way to backup a running xen-domU.
>
>  I've just tried to simply copy the file of a file-backed domU while it
>  was running.
>  Surprisingly that  was succesful, i didn't even get a filesystem error.... 
That doesn't surprise me.

>   But i think that is not a reliable way for production servers.
I think you are right about that :) .

>  What would you recommend to get reliable disaster recovery backups
>  of file-backed as well as partition-backed (raw partition or lvm
>  volumes) vms? 
I would use LVM to provide the storage and then take a snapshot ("lvcreate 
-s") in dom0 and back that up.
-- 
Lamont R. Peterson <lamont(a)gurulabs.com&gt;
Senior Instructor
Guru Labs, L.C. [ http://www.GuruLabs.com/ ]
GPG Key fingerprint: F98C E31A 5C4C 834A BCAB  8CB3 F980 6C97 DC0D D409

[Ignacio Verona]

And how do I manage to take snapshots of VM's not based on LVM? I mean, 
I have 3 VM's on my System, on three files under a /xenM directory. Is 
there any easy way I can do backups of the running virtual machines?

Thanks a lot!

Lamont R. Peterson escribió:
>  On Wednesday 03 May 2006 03:59pm, Christian Reiter wrote:
>    
> > Hello!
> >
> > I am wondering what's the best way to backup a running xen-domU.
> >
> > I've just tried to simply copy the file of a file-backed domU while it
> > was running.
> > Surprisingly that  was succesful, i didn't even get a filesystem error....
> >     
>
>  That doesn't surprise me.
>
>    
> >  But i think that is not a reliable way for production servers.
> >     
>
>  I think you are right about that :) .
>
>    
> > What would you recommend to get reliable disaster recovery backups
> > of file-backed as well as partition-backed (raw partition or lvm
> > volumes) vms?
> >     
>
>  I would use LVM to provide the storage and then take a snapshot ("lvcreate 
>  -s") in dom0 and back that up.
>    
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[Lamont R. Peterson]

On Tuesday 16 May 2006 05:30am, Ignacio Verona wrote:
>  And how do I manage to take snapshots of VM's not based on LVM? I
> mean,
>  I have 3 VM's on my System, on three files under a /xenM directory. Is
>  there any easy way I can do backups of the running virtual machines? 
Convert to using LVM; then it'll be easy.

Without converting, use backup software designed to deal with active 
filesystems.  That probably means running the backup software underneath of 
each virtual machine.

LVM is a much better choice.  Not just for backups, but it also makes it 
easier to manage your storage.

>  Thanks a lot! 
HTH.
-- 
Lamont R. Peterson <lamont(a)gurulabs.com&gt;
Senior Instructor
Guru Labs, L.C. [ http://www.GuruLabs.com/ ]
GPG Key fingerprint: F98C E31A 5C4C 834A BCAB  8CB3 F980 6C97 DC0D D409

[Christian Reiter]

Lamont R. Peterson schrieb:
>  Convert to using LVM; then it'll be easy.
>  ...
>  LVM is a much better choice.  Not just for backups, but it also makes it 
>  easier to manage your storage.
>     
But bear in mind that LVM-Snapshots aren't considered reliable at this
time.


Mit freundlichen Grüßen,  ///  Kind Regards,
                                                 Christian Reiter



-- 

Christian Reiter	|||	c.reiter(a)gmx.net

[Lamont R. Peterson]

On Tuesday 16 May 2006 12:59pm, Christian Reiter wrote:
>  Lamont R. Peterson schrieb:
>  > Convert to using LVM; then it'll be easy.
>  > ...
>  > LVM is a much better choice.  Not just for backups, but it also makes it
>  > easier to manage your storage.
>
>  But bear in mind that LVM-Snapshots aren't considered reliable at this
>  time. 
Where do you get that idea?  What do you mean by, "aren't considered 
reliable"?

You didn't think I meant to take a snapshot and call it a day, did you?  No, 
absolutely not.  You create a snapshot volume then mount that and back up the 
read only data in it.  The goal is to get a backup you can restore from.

You didn't think I was talking about using writable snapshots with LVM for 
basing multiple Xen VMs on, did you?  Well, sorry for the confusion it that's 
the case.  I was talking about read-only LVM snapshot LVs for doing backups.

Hope that clarifies things a bit.
-- 
Lamont R. Peterson <lamont(a)gurulabs.com&gt;
Senior Instructor
Guru Labs, L.C. [ http://www.GuruLabs.com/ ]
GPG Key fingerprint: F98C E31A 5C4C 834A BCAB  8CB3 F980 6C97 DC0D D409