Stefan G. Weichinger wrote:

Patrick M. Hausen schrieb:

So if you want to backup/copy an entire VM with the guarantee of
consistent hard disk state, you need to shut it down. Copying
a multi gigabyte virtal disk file is bound to take quite some time.

So you need to power down your virtual machine for what can amount
to hours.

What about combining it with LVM-snapshots?

Are LVM snapshots working properly now?

host your VMs on a LV

at backup-time you shutdown the VM(s),
generate a LV-snapshot,
power on the VM(s) again (nearly as fast as a simple reboot ...),
amdump the LV-snapshot .....

I have that opportunity here in the given case, everything VM-related
hosted on LVM.

(Yes, this only works on Linux, all you Solaris/etc people ;-) )

Stefan