Re: [Xen-users] Backup domU image at runtime

[Emmanuel COURCELLE <emmanuel.courcelle@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello
Here what we have ben doing here for a few years.

We have about 20 VMs on several physical servers.
Some of those VMs have a heavy traffic with large disks (>100Gb) ("big 
machines"), while other machines ("little machines") only provide 
important - but not too much sollicited - services with little system 
disks (10Gb).
For the former we installed locally a client backup software on the VM, 
but for the "little machines" we snapshot through lvm, mount the 
snapshot, then the backup software running on the phyical server saves 
the snapshot.
If the traffic is heavy you'll have a lot of opened files and the 
snapshot may be difficult, if not impossible, to mount (a fsck of the 
snapshot may help), so this solution may not be used (but as we get an 
error message from the backup software, we know it's time to switch to a 
local backup solution).
If the machine is just quiet, this solution may be used without any 
problem, and this avoids paying for too many software license (our 
backup solution is not free).
So to summarize, saving through a backup software running on the VM is 
the best solution, but saving through an lvm snapshot can help.
--
Emmanuel COURCELLE                emmanuel.courcelle@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
L.I.P.M. (UMR CNRS-INRA 2594/441) tel (33) 5-61-28-54-50
B.P.52627 - 31326 CASTANET TOLOSAN Cedex - FRANCE


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