CentOS virt - Dec 2009 - About doing backups with kvm guests

Hi all,

  I have two centos 5.4 servers that I use to run several windows kvm guests
(10).
All works ok (more or less) but I have a problem with backups.

  These windows guests are configured to use lvm partitions as a virtual disks.
My
problem is when I need to do guests backups.

  which is the best form to backup and restore these windows guests? Some
examples?
I see snapshot's lvm option, but I think that this option it is not valid
for
windows guests... probably I need to use dd?? But if i use dd, how can I restore
lvm
image onto another host with lvm partitions?

Thanks.

-- 
CL Martinez
carlopmart {at} gmail {d0t} com

----- "carlopmart" <carlopmart at gmail.com> wrote:
>   which is the best form to backup and restore these windows guests?
> Some examples? 
Shadow copy and amanda/zmanda.
> I see snapshot's lvm option, but I think that this option it is not
> valid for 
> windows guests...
It's valid if you don't need a clean backup. :) Usually, a dump of a
snapshot is good enough if it is read-mostly. It's probably better than
nothing, although not recommended since there are no guarantees.
> probably I need to use dd?? But if i use dd, how can
> I restore lvm 
> image onto another host with lvm partitions?
dd

-- 
Christopher G. Stach II
http://ldsys.net/~cgs/

Christopher G. Stach II wrote:
> ----- "carlopmart" <carlopmart at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>   which is the best form to backup and restore these windows guests?
>> Some examples? 
> 
> Shadow copy and amanda/zmanda.
> 
Do you mean "Volume Shadow copy" Windows feature?


-- 
CL Martinez
carlopmart {at} gmail {d0t} com

----- "carlopmart" <carlopmart at gmail.com> wrote:
> Christopher G. Stach II wrote:
> > ----- "carlopmart" <carlopmart at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> >>   which is the best form to backup and restore these windows
> guests?
> >> Some examples? 
> > 
> > Shadow copy and amanda/zmanda.
> > 
> Do you mean "Volume Shadow copy" Windows feature?
Yep.

-- 
Christopher G. Stach II
http://ldsys.net/~cgs/

Hi all,

just to add some ideas to lvm snapshots.

As far as I know ist there no need to dd the hole disk. It should fit if you
just make the lvm snap ant mount it to any device you want. So you could pack
the hole img and store it via bacula or something else. And you normally dont
need to shut down the system. The snapshot tooks a bit longer but should even do
it while the system is in use.

So just:

- take the snap
- mount it
- pack it

Dont hit me if i am not right :-)

Greetz J?rg
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2009/12/16 ml at johestephan.de <ml at
johestephan.de>:
> Hi all,
>
> As far as I know ist there no need to dd the hole disk. It should fit if
you
> So just:
>
> - take the snap
> - mount it
> - pack it
Yep, but you'll not be able to restore it into a bootable system again
if you only backup the files. You could however, take a backup with dd
of the partitiontable+bootloader and then afterwards backup the files
of each partition.

On a restore you would then copy back the partitiontable+bootloader,
format the filesystems and copy the files back.

But comparing this hacky solution to just using qcow2 on top of a
Linux filsystem, the qcow2 solution seems much nicer :) Especially now
when the qcow2 performance has been highly optimized:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/KVM_qcow2_Performance
https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2009-1659.html

Best Regards
Kenni Lund