[virt-tools-list] Would this suffice to backup a local vm image?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Tue, Feb 01, 2011 at 09:46:25AM -0500, Kenneth Armstrong wrote:
> I finally have a non-rhev related question.
> 
> Would this suffice to back up a virtual machine to external media,
> that could be later imported into virt-manager to run on another
> system?
> 
> run:
> virt-clone (back up the disk image to external media)
> virsh dumpxml vm > /backup/media/vm.xml
> 
> Or is this not going to work?

I assume also from the question that this is really about copying
guests from one host to another, perhaps for DR?  If instead what you
really want to do is take regular backups, then the recommended
solution is to install your favourite backup software inside the guest
and back it up like a regular machine.

But assuming this is about copying and DR ...

It depends on whether the guest is running, and also on how
'virt-clone' performs the copy of the disk image.  To be honest I
wouldn't bother with 'virt-clone'; it is a distraction.  Look at the
disk images directly.

What format are the disk images?  (raw, qcow2, ...)

Are they files, LVs, partitions, iSCSI LUNs, other ...?

Can your storage system take snapshots?

Do you want this to work when the VM is live, or will the VM be shut down?

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
virt-top is 'top' for virtual machines.  Tiny program with many
powerful monitoring features, net stats, disk stats, logging, etc.
http://et.redhat.com/~rjones/virt-top