Re: [Xen-users] Backup

["Paras pradhan" <pradhanparas@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 8:16 PM, James Harper <james.harper@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> hi all,
>
> What is the preferred method/tool to backup Xen guests?
>
> Xm save and DD seems to work but 'xm save' stops the virtual machine
and
> DD is slow.
>
> Any better option?
>
> I am under CentOS/DRBD
>

I use Bacula and treat the VM's like normal computers.

Alternatively you could use LVM to create a snapshot and back that up,
assuming you are using LVM in the first place.

James

Thank you all for the reply.

Here's what I did:

To backup:

1) Saved the virtual machines' state using:

xm save guest01 /guest01.save

2) lvcreate -s -L 2G -n guest01-snap /dev/vg/guest01-disk

3) Restored the VM 

xm restore /guest01.save

4) Used DD to create the image

dd if=/dev/vg/guest01-snap of=/guest01.img

5) lvremove /dev/vg/guest01-snap

To restore:

1) I turned off the VM (i don't like this)

xm shutdown guest01

2) Then run:

dd if=/guest01.img of=/dev/vg/guest01-disk

3) Turn back the VM on

--

My virtual machine is consuming 11GB of space. Now when i do DD while restoring it took a lot of time.

---

10737418240 bytes (11 GB) copied, 1189.42 seconds, 9.0 MB/s

---

Is this normal?

I don't know if the process that I have used is fine or not. Need views on this.

Thanks

Paras.

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