Hello all, Are there any best practices / recommendations for ways of doing this ? In this case the ZVOLs would be iSCSI LUNS containing ESX VMs .....I am aware of the of the need for the VMs to be quiesced for the backups to be useful. Cheers. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
On Nov 14, 2009, at 4:38 AM, Brian McKerr wrote:> Hello all, > > Are there any best practices / recommendations for ways of doing > this ? > > In this case the ZVOLs would be iSCSI LUNS containing ESX VMs .....I > am aware of the of the need for the VMs to be quiesced for the > backups to be useful.The best way is to backup closest to the context of the data -- in the VM client. But you can take snapshots of the volumes and dd or zfs send them to a backup system. Little time is required to take a snapshot, but the time required to quiesce the VM can, in my experience, be much larger than desired. Another method is to take snapshots with the VM and then save those. The same caveat applies wrt the client VM noticing the quiesce. -- richard
Thanks for the help. I was curious whether the zfs send|receive was considered suitable given a few things I''ve read which said somethings along the lines of "don''t count on being able to restore this stuff". Ideally that is what I would use with the ''incremental'' option so as to only backup changed blocks on subsequent backups. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
On Nov 14, 2009, at 1:59 PM, Brian McKerr wrote:> Thanks for the help. > > I was curious whether the zfs send|receive was considered suitable > given a few things I''ve read which said somethings along the lines > of "don''t count on being able to restore this stuff". Ideally that > is what I would use with the ''incremental'' option so as to only > backup changed blocks on subsequent backups.Please consult the ZFS Best Practices guide. http://www.solarisinternals.com/wiki/index.php/ZFS_Best_Practices_Guide#ZFS_Backup_.2F_Restore_Recommendations -- richard