Timothy J Massey wrote:
> 
>> I thought there was a way to access the vmx image directly from linux, 
>> but I don't know if it has to be mounted or if you can see a raw 
>> partition.
> 
> Depends:  are we talking VMware Server, or ESX/ESXi?  And if we're talking 
> ESXi, are we talking SAN, NAS or DAS (directly attached storage)?

Server.

> In the case of Server, the VMX images are right there on a Linux 
> filesystem: do with them what you want.  Just snapshot properly.  I think 
> I've commented enough on this in other e-mails.

I know there are there in the form of a directory of files which will be 
nice for the rsync step.  What I want to know is if the physical host 
can see the virtual disk/partition the same way a guest can. There is a 
vmware-mount that I think lets you see the virtual filesystem, but I 
want access to the raw virtual partition at a block device level.

>> I was hoping I could make a virtual partition visible on 
>> physical backuppc server so I could sync it as a raid1, then remove it 
>> and have something that could be used in a virtual machine or copied via 
> 
>> rsync, then used by a remote virtual machine.
> 
> What is a "virtual partition"?  Do you mean the VMFS directly?  Or do you 
> mean that you want to *mount* the filesystem *inside* of the VMware image?

I was hoping to be able to see a block device on the host that would be 
the same thing a guest would see.  Then, without running a guest I could 
either let the virtual partition sync as a raid member or dd an image 
copy to it.  When that is complete, I'd like to be able to rsync the 
directory of files that hold the vmdk virtual disk off to another 
machine where a virtual machine could be started to access it the usual way.

> While it is theoretically possible to configure VMware guests (at least on 
> Server) to use physical partitions directly (and therefore eliminate a 
> layer of complexity), this is *not* a recommended configuration.  Frankly, 
> the idea of doing *anything* to a VMware guest filesystem at the block 
> layer is pretty much a non-starter--especially when VMFS is involved.

I want it the other way around - the physical host accessing a virtual disk.

> Basically, with VMware, you have few and limited choices for image-level 
> backup without using the pay-for tools.
> 
> Server:  You can capture images at the filesystem layer (as standard UNIX 
> files), assuming that you snapshot the guest properly.  No extra cost, and 
> 100% reliable backups, but a pretty manual process and slight downtime 
> twice.  Not useful for daily backups without a lot of work (you can't 
> script snapshot removal in Server).  Mainly useful for quarterly or so 
> disaster recovery images.

I suppose I could do dd over ssh to image copy to a running guest if the 
physical host can't do it directly, then shut the guest down for the rsync.

> Anyway, the idea of trying to automatically work with VMware images at the 
> block level without VMware's tools is not that great.   You can't automate
> the use of snapshots in Server (it's intentionally not scriptable).

On the local side I don't really need a snapshot since I've got the 
master copy.  On the remote side I'd want to keep two copies, switching 
between them for updates or something similar.

> You 
> *could* shut down the guest, make an LVM snapshot, restart the guest and 
> use the LVM snapshot to perform a block-level rsync-style (or even 
> cp-style) copy of the images.  You might be able to do something similar 
> with ESXi and a NAS that allows LVM-style snapshots.  But outside of that, 
> there be dragons...

If I have to change the parent OS, it would probably be to opensolaris 
so I could work with zfs snapshots.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell AT gmail DOT com




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