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Hello<br>
<br>
This new HowTo explains how to backup a VM without powering it down.<br>
It's specifically aimed at KVM although it may work with any
virtualization software that uses Linux as the host.<br>
<br>
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?<br>
<br>
It has not been released yet and it's a first draft, so break it to me
gently...<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/BackupKVMGuest">http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/BackupKVMGuest</a><br>
<br>
(The article's internal Wiki links are broken - not sure what's going
on there, but ignore that)<br>
<br>
A taster...<br>
<h2 id="head-d5c31ed2a8892837f463bb722d8e9b46137d59dd">1. Introduction</h2>
<span class="anchor" id="line-10"></span>
<p class="line874">This article explains how to backup a virtual hard
disk to a remote location, even while it is use. <span class="anchor"
id="line-11"></span><span class="anchor" id="line-12"></span></p>
<p class="line874">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. <span
class="anchor" id="line-13"></span><span class="anchor" id="line-14"></span></p>
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.<br>
...<br>
<br>
Thanks,<br>
Julian
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