[CentOS] VMWare disaster recovery?

Fri Jul 14 07:20:22 UTC 2006
Dan Pritts <danno at internet2.edu>

On Thu, Jun 29, 2006 at 02:53:45PM -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
> I found this in the large and growing list of downloadable vmware
> appliances: http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/316.
> I haven't run it yet, but it claims to provide a way to mirror
> running windows boxes over iscsi to vmware disk images, then allows
> you to boot that image under vmware as a replacement for the server
> with little downtime.

This really shouldn't be hard to do with linux.  it's a lot harder
with windows since windows cares so much about the specifics of the
hardware it is running on.  The only things you need to change
should be the initrd.  You should be able to build an initrd that
has all the required drivers for both your physical hardware
and vmware.

I have more or less done this with a running debian unstable system.

> Has anyone attempted something like this with Centos - or know if
> software mirrors work over iscsi? 

I haven't, but I'd be real surprised if it didn't work.

danno
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dan pritts - systems administrator - internet2
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