John Rouillard <rouilj-backu...@renesys.com> wrote on 02/19/2010 02:54:28 PM:
> On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 01:44:02PM -0500, Timothy J Massey wrote: > > John Moorhouse <john.moorho...@3jays.me.uk> wrote on 02/19/2010 12:11:45 > > PM: > > > > > I'm happily using backupPC to backup a number of machine within our > > > home network, I'm wondering what will happen if I use it to backup > > > the file on the host machine that is the virtual disc for a number > > > of virtual box VM, will it have to backup the whole file each run > > > (they are rather large) or is it capable of only copying those bits > > > of the file that have changed ? > > > > > > Basically I'm after suggestions of 'best practice' in this situation > > > > First of all, backing up VM files directly without coordination from the > > VM system (e.g. snapshots, etc.) is highly likely to end up with corrupted > > VM files. I leave determining the correct way of doing this up to you. > > Been there done that, had 3 non-restorable backups in a > row. Fortunately I caught them during test restores and not when we > had to have the file back. The best thing to do is to shut down the vm > before backing it up. Only if you leave the machine shut down the entire time. For VMware, that's a lot of (needless) downtime. Do a snapshot, and then be prepared to revert to the snapshot in the event of a restore. > You can do this with vmware at least using a > BackupPC pre share command that executes something like: > > vmrun -u master -p passwd -h https://localhost:8333/sdk suspend 'machine > name here.vmx' > > you can also stop/start the system. I am not sure if you can trigger a > snapshot, but that may be a good solution if you can't take the > virtual system down. You can, but not in the free tools. That's the carrot for the pay stuff. > The command may change depending on what vmware product you are using, > but there should be a cli somewhere. We handle it by shutting down the machine, snapshotting it and immediately restarting it. We can live with downtime measured in minutes, and we only do such backups periodically (monthly to quarterly). For us, backing up the VM images is for disaster recovery. Our primary backup is the in-guest backup. But pairing the two is *really* nice. Tim Massey ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Download Intel® Parallel Studio Eval Try the new software tools for yourself. Speed compiling, find bugs proactively, and fine-tune applications for parallel performance. See why Intel Parallel Studio got high marks during beta. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-sw-dev _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list BackupPC-users@lists.sourceforge.net List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
