Re: [Xen-users] Backing up "live" Xen systems?

[Ram <tekayr@xxxxxxxxx>]

If I understood your post, you actually want to have recoverable
"system images" of the virtual systems as opposed to backing up 
the data on the virtual systems. Did I get that right?

I am very interested in the solution as well.

The way I see it, to  do "live" back ups, you will have to 
do it from within the virtual system.  You could potential pause,
the virtual instance to avoid data integrity issues and migrate.
This pause is like to interrupt production, but better than doing
off-line I suppose. 

Thanks
Ram

On 1/4/06, Steve Kemp < steve@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

  I've been testing Xen for a few weeks now and am just about to
put it into production use.  (I wrote some scripts to create
Debian images easily; the tools are included in Debian Sid as
"xen-tools".)

  The only thing troubling me at the moment is backing up the
virtual instances.

  I'm looking to run about four virtual systems upon a host.  If
the physical host dies then I'm going to be in trouble without
backups!

  I realise I can setup traditional backups within the virtual
instances using rsync, scp, or a backup agent.  But I'm curious
about backing up images live.  (Primarily to avoid having to
setup near identical scripts upon each instance and make sure
they work correctly.)

  It strikes me that the live-migration support does a lot of the
things that a backup of a live system should do - literally sending
the contents of the systems image + memory to a new host.

  Would it be possible to write a simple "fake" migration server
to receive the image, write it to disk, and then "abort" gracefully?

  That would allow a live system to be backed up without taking
it offline.

  Any thoughts, or suggestions, appreciated.

Steve
--
Debian GNU/Linux System Administration
http://www.debian-administration.org/


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