backup KVM guest (Mike Lovell)

[Make Compile]

On 02/14/2011 02:09 AM, Make Compile wrote:
> Hi guys,
> 
anyone here running on kvm virtualization? I'm looking a solution for 
backing up my kvm guest without LVM snapshot. coz I'm running it on a 
none lvm partition. What i did to backup is to go offline state and then
 do the old way command "cp" the image file to its destination media. 
Anyone here suggest a good strategy. Tnx

backing up a vm should 
be no different than backing up any other server. there are many 
alternatives for backing up a system. rsync to a remote host, bacula, 
amanda, crashplan, compilation of self built shell scripts.

how 
to do backups for vms was brought up several times over the several 
months i was on the xen-users mailing list. it seemed the general good 
advice is to do a backup from within the vm just like you would any 
other server. many wanted to use something like lvm snapshots to do full
 filesystem backups while the vm is running. the problem is that when 
you take the lvm snapshot, you are taking a snapshot of a currently 
mounted filesystem which may or may not have problems with it. it will 
work for vms that have a low volume of writes but something like a 
database would be a bad thing.

one backup strategy i saw at a 
previous job, and like, was to rsync / (excluding /dev, /proc, /sys, 
/tmp, etc) to a rsync server and then use hard links on the rsync server
 to create a rolling snapshots of what the filesystem looked like. i 
don't have access to the scripts and config for that backup system but 
this link describes something similar. http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/

of course, there are many many other options depending on what you want to do. hope that helps.

mike


Tnx for the kind prompt sir, I may take that an option(rsync) since we have no option of buying commercial solution and also the day i've created my KVM server i don't have the idea that it should be on top of LVM volume to achieve lvm snapshot. anyways. I go over the link to study more rsync usage. Tnx again
--- On Fri, 2/18/11, plug-request at plug.org <plug-request at plug.org> wrote:

From: plug-request at plug.org <plug-request at plug.org>
Subject: PLUG Digest, Vol 74, Issue 24
To: plug at plug.org
Date: Friday, February 18, 2011, 7:00 PM

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: backup KVM guest (Steve Meyers)
   2. Re: backup KVM guest (Mike Lovell)
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