On 13-04-06 10:50 AM, Geoff Nordli wrote: > On 13-04-06 08:36 AM, Stephan von Krawczynski wrote: >> Hi all, >> >> I feel a need to be more precise on the true nature of the question. My >> intention is not only to have a consistent vdi image, but also to have a >> consistent backup of the virtual guest. I talked to a friend using >> VM*are and >> how he is taking working backups. Basically he does this: >> >> 1. take a snapshot of the guest >> 2. Backup the snapshot and the virtual drive files >> 3. delete the snapshot >> >> I checked that with the vbox docs, and to me it looks like that >> should work >> out here, too. Sure you get a partially broken differential vdi >> image. But >> since you go back to the snapshot on restore where the differential >> image >> should be thrown away anyway there should be no negative effect. And >> the guest >> snapshot (machine state) does not change which means it should be no >> problem >> to backup during runtime. >> Am I missing something? > > I would say that the vbox snapshots are not the path you want to take > for backups. VBox snapshots are great when experimenting with > software, or creating a library using a base images. If you do a VBox > snapshot online, then you also have a .sav file, and you have to wait > for the save/resume to complete before it can come back online. If > you can afford downtime, then I would power off the VM to get a > consistent state of your data. > > Other people may be able to chime in here, but if you looking at using > it for backups, then pausing the machine, and using LVM may be > something that works, because after you take the backup, you delete > the lvm snapshot. You will need to delete the backup though because > LVM doesn't scale well for snapshots. In the past I used LVM and raw > disks to do this. > > Geoff
BTW, here is a script that I have used in the past for backing up vbox with LVM. It is pretty quick and dirty, but I am sure you can borrow some parts of it. http://pastebin.com/vDuAXmzE Geoff ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Minimize network downtime and maximize team effectiveness. Reduce network management and security costs.Learn how to hire the most talented Cisco Certified professionals. Visit the Employer Resources Portal http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/employer_resources/index.html _______________________________________________ VBox-users-community mailing list VBox-users-community@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/vbox-users-community _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe: mailto:vbox-users-community-requ...@lists.sourceforge.net?subject=unsubscribe
