CentOS virt - Mar 2009 - Backing up a running KVM guest

Hello

This new HowTo explains how to backup a VM without powering it down.
It's specifically aimed at KVM although it may work with any 
virtualization software that uses Linux as the host.

Please review it and let me know what you think, particularly if you are 
already doing something similar yourself, or would like to.  Do you have 
answers to any of the questions in the 'Questions' section?

It has not been released yet and it's a first draft, so break it to me 
gently...
http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/BackupKVMGuest

(The article's internal Wiki links are broken - not sure what's going on
there, but ignore that)

A taster...


    1. Introduction

This article explains how to backup a virtual hard disk to a remote 
location, even while it is use.

One advantage of running software in a virtual machine is that the 
entire disk can be backed up in one go, including Operating System, 
software, configuration files, registry, permissions, data and all. 
Re-establishing a system after a failure is therefore quicker and more 
reliable than re-installing software and restoring data.

The method employs LVM to take a snapshot of the guest disk and then 
uses rsync to update changes to a previous backup on a remote server. If 
there is a database server on the guest then it is flushed & locked at 
the point the snapshot is taken. This method came into use around 2008 
following wider availability and awareness of virtualization software, 
cheaper faster network bandwidth, and cheaper bigger disks.
...

Thanks,
Julian
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On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 01:22:43PM +0000, Julian Price
wrote:
> It has not been released yet and it's a first draft, so break it to me
> gently...
> http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/BackupKVMGuest
Interesting read. One other alternative, with drbd:
  1) break sync on other node
  2) backup on other node
  3) resync other node

Of course, drbd may not be best suited for disk intensive uses but your
milleage may vary...

Rui

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