Re: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-03-10 Thread Steve Wray
Paul Bijnens wrote: On 2008-03-06 21:38, Steve Wray wrote: Stefan G. Weichinger wrote: Patrick M. Hausen schrieb: So if you want to backup/copy an entire VM with the guarantee of consistent hard disk state, you need to shut it down. Copying a multi gigabyte virtal disk file is bound to take

Re: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-03-07 Thread Paul Bijnens
On 2008-03-06 21:38, Steve Wray wrote: Stefan G. Weichinger wrote: Patrick M. Hausen schrieb: So if you want to backup/copy an entire VM with the guarantee of consistent hard disk state, you need to shut it down. Copying a multi gigabyte virtal disk file is bound to take quite some time. So

Re: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-03-06 Thread Steve Wray
Stefan G. Weichinger wrote: Patrick M. Hausen schrieb: So if you want to backup/copy an entire VM with the guarantee of consistent hard disk state, you need to shut it down. Copying a multi gigabyte virtal disk file is bound to take quite some time. So you need to power down your virtual

RE: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-28 Thread Curtis Preston
PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2008 2:06 PM To: Curtis Preston; amanda-users@amanda.org Subject: Re: Backing up VMware-VMs Curtis Preston wrote: Unless you're coordinating with the OS, then taking a VMware snapshot and copying it is equivalent to pulling the power plug

RE: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-28 Thread Curtis Preston
28, 2008 10:21 AM To: Steven Kurylo; amanda-users@amanda.org Subject: RE: Backing up VMware-VMs After consulting with two VMware experts, I stand by my original statement, that a snapshot of a vm is a crash consistent copy, which means that it's just like someone pulled the power plug

RE: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-28 Thread Curtis Preston
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2008 10:38 AM To: Curtis Preston; Steven Kurylo; amanda-users@amanda.org Subject: RE: Backing up VMware-VMs Here's some further information from the VMware manuals. I searched for the word snapshot in all manuals here: http://pubs.vmware.com/vi35/wwhelp/wwhimpl

Re: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-28 Thread Chris Hoogendyk
] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Curtis Preston Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2008 10:21 AM To: Steven Kurylo; amanda-users@amanda.org Subject: RE: Backing up VMware-VMs After consulting with two VMware experts, I stand by my original statement, that a snapshot of a vm is a crash consistent

Re: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-27 Thread Steven
Stefan G. Weichinger wrote: Because we are fearing problems? We do a vm snapshot to a backup server. Amanda backs up the snapshot from the backup server. And it is reliable? We've never had a problem restoring machines. We often take a snapshot of a production machine and turn

RE: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-27 Thread Curtis Preston
-users@amanda.org Subject: Re: Backing up VMware-VMs Stefan G. Weichinger wrote: Because we are fearing problems? We do a vm snapshot to a backup server. Amanda backs up the snapshot from the backup server. And it is reliable? We've never had a problem restoring machines. We

Re: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-27 Thread Patrick M. Hausen
Hi, all, On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 01:27:11PM -0500, Curtis Preston wrote: Unless you're coordinating with the OS, then taking a VMware snapshot and copying it is equivalent to pulling the power plug on a server. Will it power back up without corruption? 99.9% of the time, yes. Has anyone who

Re: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-27 Thread Rodrigo Ventura
On Feb 27, 2008, at 7:00 PM, Patrick M. Hausen wrote: Does anyone know the reason why you cannot snapshot powered off machines? Hum, only the obvious answer pops to mind: because there is no state to snapshot at all! A powered-off machine has no state, besides the contents of the

Re: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-27 Thread Patrick M. Hausen
Hello, On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 07:40:26PM +, Rodrigo Ventura wrote: On Feb 27, 2008, at 7:00 PM, Patrick M. Hausen wrote: Does anyone know the reason why you cannot snapshot powered off machines? Hum, only the obvious answer pops to mind: because there is no state to snapshot at

Re: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-27 Thread Steve Newcomb
Does anyone know the reason why you cannot snapshot powered off machines? I have learned that backups of VMware Windows-XP guests under Linux are easy, and seem reliable, without starting or restarting VMware or the VM. The method we use requires that the Windows NTFS filesystem be set up

Re: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-27 Thread Stefan G. Weichinger
Patrick M. Hausen schrieb: So if you want to backup/copy an entire VM with the guarantee of consistent hard disk state, you need to shut it down. Copying a multi gigabyte virtal disk file is bound to take quite some time. So you need to power down your virtual machine for what can amount

Re: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-27 Thread Steven Kurylo
Curtis Preston wrote: Unless you're coordinating with the OS, then taking a VMware snapshot and copying it is equivalent to pulling the power plug on a server. Will it power back up without corruption? 99.9% of the time, yes. Has anyone who has been in the biz for a while had a scenario where

draft for a wrapper-helper-script (was: Backing up VMware-VMs)

2008-02-27 Thread Stefan G. Weichinger
Stefan G. Weichinger schrieb: [EMAIL PROTECTED] schrieb: There is a (moderately good) howto by me and an excellent one by Paul Bijnens at this location : http://www.amanda.org/docs/howto-wrapper.html Attached you find my current draft of handle_vms.sh, which I use with amgtar to handle the

Re: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-27 Thread Steven Kurylo
Correct. But as I understand, snapshots in VMware work similar to transaction logs in databases. The virtual disk file is locked in its current state and further changes are temporarily written to separate files until the snapshot is comitted or rolled back. Yes. So if you want to

RE: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-27 Thread Curtis Preston
That's not obvious enough for me. Stepping outside the VMware world for a moment, what the user is proposing is totally normal. We do it in the virtualized storage world all the time. Stop the app, snap the image, start the app, then back it up. I don't want to leave the app down the entire

Re: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-27 Thread Steven Kurylo
Steven Kurylo wrote: Correct. But as I understand, snapshots in VMware work similar to transaction logs in databases. The virtual disk file is locked in its current state and further changes are temporarily written to separate files until the snapshot is comitted or rolled back. Yes. So

Re: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-26 Thread Steven Kurylo
Stefan G. Weichinger wrote: Greets to all of you, just before I try to reinvent the wheel: For a client I have to dump VMware-VMs with amanda, they should be shut down by a wrapper script (using vmware-cmd), dumped and restarted, one VM after the other. Why would you shut down the VM

Re: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-26 Thread Stefan G. Weichinger
Steven Kurylo schrieb: Stefan G. Weichinger wrote: Greets to all of you, just before I try to reinvent the wheel: For a client I have to dump VMware-VMs with amanda, they should be shut down by a wrapper script (using vmware-cmd), dumped and restarted, one VM after the other. Why

Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-14 Thread Stefan G. Weichinger
Greets to all of you, just before I try to reinvent the wheel: For a client I have to dump VMware-VMs with amanda, they should be shut down by a wrapper script (using vmware-cmd), dumped and restarted, one VM after the other. I can imagine the solution already, shouldn't be too hard, but I am

Re: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-14 Thread Patrick M. Hausen
Hi! For a client I have to dump VMware-VMs with amanda We install Amanda inside the VM's OS, most of the time FreeBSD. I don't see a fundamental difference from a backup point of view between a virtual and a real server. If you backup VMs from the outside, you are bound to copy the virtual

Re: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-14 Thread Stefan G. Weichinger
Beste Grüsse, Patrick, von Österreich nach Deutschland ;) Patrick M. Hausen schrieb: We install Amanda inside the VM's OS, most of the time FreeBSD. I don't see a fundamental difference from a backup point of view between a virtual and a real server. If you backup VMs from the outside,

Re: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-14 Thread Stefan G. Weichinger
Stefan G. Weichinger schrieb: - amanda-wrapper stops, dumps and restarts every of these DLEs I mean: stops vmx, dumps DLE, starts vmx sorry ...

RE: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-14 Thread Barry Clarke
being accessed or some voodoo was happenning at the time. Barry -Original Message- From: Patrick M. Hausen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 14 February 2008 19:54 To: Stefan G. Weichinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Amanda user's group amanda-users@amanda.org Subject: Re: Backing up VMware-VMs Hi

Re: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-14 Thread Stefan G. Weichinger
[EMAIL PROTECTED] schrieb: There is a (moderately good) howto by me and an excellent one by Paul Bijnens at this location : http://www.amanda.org/docs/howto-wrapper.html I use it to shut down Lotus Domino and Oracle databases. Thanks, Bert, I know that howto, edited it by myself for

Re: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-14 Thread Bert_De_Ridder
PROTECTED] To Amanda user's group amanda-users@amanda.org cc Subject Backing up VMware-VMs Greets to all of you, just before I try to reinvent the wheel: For a client I have to dump VMware-VMs with amanda, they should be shut down by a wrapper script (using vmware-cmd), dumped

Re: Backing up VMware-VMs

2008-02-14 Thread Stefan G. Weichinger
Greets, Jon ;) Jon LaBadie schrieb: Brainstorming: what are vmware's scripting capabilities? http://www.vmware.com/pdf/Scripting_API_215.pdf ;) is there a distinction between dumping an image of a current vm versus creating an installable vm from an existing vm? errm, I am not sure if