I''m trying to understand how snapshots work in terms of how I can use them for recovering and/or duplicating virtual machines, and how I should set up my file system. I want to use OpenSolaris as a storage platform with NFS/ZFS for some development VMs; that is, the VMs use the OpenSolaris box as their NAS for shared access. Should I set up a separate ZFS file system for each VM so I can individually snapshot each one on a regular basis, or does it matter? The goal would be to be able to take an individual VM back to a previous point in time without changing the others. Thanks -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 11:50 AM, Mark <whitetr6 at gmail.com> wrote:> I''m trying to understand how snapshots work in terms of how I can use them > for recovering and/or duplicating virtual machines, and how I should set up > my file system. > > I want to use OpenSolaris as a storage platform with NFS/ZFS for some > development VMs; that is, the VMs use the OpenSolaris box as their NAS for > shared access. > > Should I set up a separate ZFS file system for each VM so I can > individually snapshot each one on a regular basis, or does it matter? The > goal would be to be able to take an individual VM back to a previous point > in time without changing the others. > > you can put multiple guests in a single filesystem and use them as abaseline install, then clone it for each new guest, but then you have several baseline guests in the fiilesystem which ZFS is fine with, but may be confusing for the user... linux_base windows_base solaris_base.. all show up in every clone, if you put one guest baseline in each filesystem and clone then you will only see one in each clone and of course you can rename the directories in the clones to match what you want. you need to clone a filesystem per guest because ZFS can only rollback full filesystems, not invidual files. your VM solution may have finer tuned controlls for its own snapshots but those are don''t use ZFS'' abililities. James Dickens uadmin.blogspot.com> Thanks > -- > This message posted from opensolaris.org > _______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss >-------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20100729/d87d7dba/attachment.html>
Thank you James, exactly the answer I needed. Regards, Mark On Jul 29, 2010 3:05pm, James Dickens <jamesd.wi at gmail.com> wrote:> On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 11:50 AM, Mark whitetr6 at gmail.com> wrote:> I''m trying to understand how snapshots work in terms of how I can use > them for recovering and/or duplicating virtual machines, and how I should > set up my file system.> I want to use OpenSolaris as a storage platform with NFS/ZFS for some > development VMs; that is, the VMs use the OpenSolaris box as their NAS > for shared access.> Should I set up a separate ZFS file system for each VM so I can > individually snapshot each one on a regular basis, or does it matter? The > goal would be to be able to take an individual VM back to a previous > point in time without changing the others.> you can put multiple guests in a single filesystem and use them as a > baseline install, then clone it for each new guest, but then you have > several baseline guests in the fiilesystem which ZFS is fine with, but > may be confusing for the user... linux_base windows_base solaris_base.. > all show up in every clone, if you put one guest baseline in each > filesystem and clone then you will only see one in each clone and of > course you can rename the directories in the clones to match what you > want.> you need to clone a filesystem per guest because ZFS can only rollback > full filesystems, not invidual files. your VM solution may have finer > tuned controlls for its own snapshots but those are don''t use ZFS'' > abililities.> James Dickens > uadmin.blogspot.com> Thanks> --> This message posted from opensolaris.org> _______________________________________________> zfs-discuss mailing list> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss-------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20100729/33386da6/attachment.html>