Re: Backing up virtual machines

I've been backing up virtual hosts on Solaris.

There are a couple of ways...

If the virtual, er, lets use the proper vendor terms
because they connote specific non-transferable things.

In some cases I can backup my non-global zones from the
global zone amanda client. This is fine if the whole of
the non-global zone file system is visable from the global
zone.

For those systems where there are file systems within the
non-global zone that are not visable from the global zone,
for instance, ZFS file systems that are not-mounted by
the global zone, then I do run an amanda-client within both
the global and the non-global zones.

I realize this is essentially what Jon said, but I had
accomplished on another platform and wanted to say that
"yes, this does work".


On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 02:51:24PM -0500, Jon LaBadie wrote:
> Just dipping my toe into virtual machines and
> wondering how others are doing backups of them.
> 
> I'm using VirtualBox with a host of Fedora 9.
> My guest is WinXP Pro.  The objective is to
> no longer need to dual-boot this machine.
> 
> The virtual guest does appear on my network as
> a separate host and static IP when it is up.
> 
> I can see two ways to backup it up;
> 
>  - backup the VBox files (*.vdi and others) on
>    the host Fedora file system
> 
>  - consider the virtual machine a separate host
>    and amanda client
> 
> How have others dealt with this situation?
> Or maybe both forms are used simultaneously?
> 
> jl
> -- 
> Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
>  JG Computing
>  12027 Creekbend Drive                (703) 787-0884
>  Reston, VA  20194            (703) 787-0922 (fax)
---
   Brian R Cuttler                 brian.cuttler AT wadsworth DOT org
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