John Rouillard <rouilj-backuppc AT renesys DOT com> wrote on 02/19/2010
02:54:28
PM:
> On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 01:44:02PM -0500, Timothy J Massey wrote:
> > John Moorhouse <john.moorhouse AT 3jays.me DOT uk> wrote on 02/19/2010
12:11:45
> > PM:
> >
> > > I'm happily using backupPC to backup a number of machine within our
> > > home network, I'm wondering what will happen if I use it to backup
> > > the file on the host machine that is the virtual disc for a number
> > > of virtual box VM, will it have to backup the whole file each run
> > > (they are rather large) or is it capable of only copying those bits
> > > of the file that have changed ?
> > >
> > > Basically I'm after suggestions of 'best practice' in this situation
> >
> > First of all, backing up VM files directly without coordination from
the
> > VM system (e.g. snapshots, etc.) is highly likely to end up with
corrupted
> > VM files. I leave determining the correct way of doing this up to
you.
>
> Been there done that, had 3 non-restorable backups in a
> row. Fortunately I caught them during test restores and not when we
> had to have the file back. The best thing to do is to shut down the vm
> before backing it up.
Only if you leave the machine shut down the entire time. For VMware,
that's a lot of (needless) downtime. Do a snapshot, and then be prepared
to revert to the snapshot in the event of a restore.
> You can do this with vmware at least using a
> BackupPC pre share command that executes something like:
>
> vmrun -u master -p passwd -h https://localhost:8333/sdk suspend
'machine
> name here.vmx'
>
> you can also stop/start the system. I am not sure if you can trigger a
> snapshot, but that may be a good solution if you can't take the
> virtual system down.
You can, but not in the free tools. That's the carrot for the pay stuff.
> The command may change depending on what vmware product you are using,
> but there should be a cli somewhere.
We handle it by shutting down the machine, snapshotting it and immediately
restarting it. We can live with downtime measured in minutes, and we only
do such backups periodically (monthly to quarterly).
For us, backing up the VM images is for disaster recovery. Our primary
backup is the in-guest backup. But pairing the two is *really* nice.
Tim Massey
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