Hi there, On Thu, 12 Jan 2023, lu lu wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Jan 2023, G.W. Haywood wrote: > > On Wed, 11 Jan 2023, lu lu wrote: > > > ... is it possible with backuppc to backup a complete virtual machine? > > ... > > Yes, but it's pointless. You may as well just make a copy. > > There are better ways to do what you want, for example you might look > into snapshotting filesystems. > ... Can you explain better what you mean?
Read the documentation. One of the most important features of BackupPC is its deduplication. That means even if it keeps hundreds of backups, it need only keep one copy of any particular file if the file hasn't changed from one backup to the next. If you backup an entire VM as a file it will always be different (from minute to minute, let alone from backup to backup). Not only will the BackupPC system not be able to deduplicate the file, it probably won't be able even to complete a copy before the file has changed - so files it tries to copy might not actually be usable. You might need to stop the VM while the backup is taking place in order to get an internally consistent, usable result. Snapshotting filesystems 'freeze' an image of the filesystem at some particular time but they permit that filesystem to continue working normally. You can then copy any frozen files at your leisure, without resorting to things like stopping your VMs during backups. Backing up large databases for example may need similar consideration. Why would you want to back up a complete VM anyway? It's usually much better to have a template for the VM and then back up for example just the user data, which will usually be tiny by comparison with a full VM. -- 73, Ged. _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list BackupPC-users@lists.sourceforge.net List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: https://github.com/backuppc/backuppc/wiki Project: https://backuppc.github.io/backuppc/
