Thanks for the reply, but it would be more appropriate to reply to the list...
Jarl brent timothy saner <[email protected]> writes: > Jarl Friis wrote: >> I am having some virtual machiines on my ubuntu server 9.04-AMD64. The >> machines are KVM, I aam using libvirt to manage them. >> >> I wonder what is the recomende way to backup these machines. >> >> Is it just to >> virsh suspend >> backup >> virsh resume >> >> Or are there any other documents/pages discussing this issue? >> >> Jarl >> >> > > > hey, jarl- > > this all depends on what /kind/ of backup you want. if you want > versioned backups in regards to the files ON them, then an archiving > backup system- something like boxbackup- running on a different VM or a > different host altogether would be the way to go (and run the backup > client daemon from inside the VM). this minimizes downtime, as the VM > would not need to be down to make the backups. > > if, however, you want a bare metal image type backup (i.e. contingency > in case it all hits the fan), then you can stop the vm and then copy the > hard disk image (i'd also backup any associated configs/scripts) from > the host (and i'd recomment tarballing and gzipping them). > > additionally, KVM supports something called "snapshotting" as i recall- > i never delved very deeply into kvm so i may be mistaken, but i recall > it supporting it with certain types of the virtual disk (i believe it > does NOT work with the "raw" type. for anyone who knows better, please > feel free to correct me). > what snapshotting does is basically takes a photograph (or "snapshot".. > pretty simple etymology, yeah? :) of the currently running system. i've > NEVER tried restoring one of these, but i believe you need a running > functional VM for it to be able to use it. > > so here's what my personal recommendation is, provided you have the > appropriate resources available: > > BAREMETAL BACKUP: once a week > ARCHIVING BACKUP: once daily > SNAPSHOTS: hourly > > and you should be pretty much ready for anything that might happen, i think. > > assuming.. you know, your backups aren't corrupt and/or > fire/theft/apocalypse/etc. :) > > hth -- Jarl Friis Gavia Technologies ApS Omøgade 8, 2.sal 2100 København Ø. Denmark Phone: +45 26 13 20 90 E-mail: [email protected] LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jarlfriis -- ubuntu-server mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam
