XenServer Backup
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Well this is one question that has kind of nagged me, how do you protect the Xen Orchestra VM?
You can't back it up, using it's self.
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@DustinB3403 You can backup it if you want ^^ Exporting the backup on a NFS remote share, then if it crashes, re-import a new XOA, connect to the NFS share and reimport it. Tadaaa
No problem to export a running VM, so no problem to export "itself".
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And very soon, you'll have the "continuous VM replication" allowing you to protect XOA itself too, with a minimal downtime.
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BTW, I made very interesting tests with ZFS on Linux + XOA delta backups.
Using LZ4 compression is very impressive. Maybe one day integrate the LZ4 compression on the fly into xo-server.
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@DustinB3403 said:
Well this is one question that has kind of nagged me, how do you protect the Xen Orchestra VM?
You can't back it up, using it's self.
You could run it in a container like me and then just clone the container and export it.
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What I was planning on doing what at the hypervisor level.
Since I'm running on Xen, I was going to use NAUBackup to simply export a full on a weekly schedule....
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@olivier I have a quick question. So I ran an incremental backup. I got the green terminated sign, but there was still a snapshot of the VM left. Does XO need the snapshot to restore the deltas from?
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@johnhooks The only thing needed is a VDI named "XO_DELTA" something like that (visible in the SR view, in the VDI list).
And it's only needed to create delta. You don't need anything to import a backup, you can doing on a freshly installed XenServer (that's the point of a backup: to be useful in case you lost everything)
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@olivier said:
@johnhooks The only thing needed is a VDI named "XO_DELTA" something like that (visible in the SR view, in the VDI list).
And it's only needed to create delta. You don't need anything to import a backup, you can doing on a freshly installed XenServer (that's the point of a backup: to be useful in case you lost everything)
Ok ya that's what I saw. It showed it as a snapshot but called XO_DELTA something or other. It didn't delete after the job ran so I didn't know if I needed to keep it or not. Thanks!
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@johnhooks It stays until the next backup: then it's removed and replaced just after by a new delta snapshot. That's because a delta is always created by making a difference between 2 references (the current VM disk and a snapshot).
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So @olivier is my system not working correctly then?
I have no Snapshots of the VM I've been testing the Delta functionality with, nor do I have any additional vdisk.
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@DustinB3403 Hmm. You should have a VDI snapshot somewhere in your SR view (that's not visible inside the VM view, only on the SR one)
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I just ran a test Delta Backup and here's the disk
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You mean in the target repository correct?
Which I have
So I do have a VDI in there, but nothing shows within XC.
Which is what I thought you meant (and @johnhooks)
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@DustinB3403 No inside the SR (the XenServer SR)
edit: the SR where reside your VM disks
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Under the main view for the actual hypervisor in XO, if you look at the storage section and then click on the repository that holds the VHDs. It will list all of the drives. They should be in there.
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@olivier OK yeah I do have those.
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@DustinB3403 So everything is fine
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Here's another question, since they are deltas, are they thin provisioned or is it a full copy of the VM. For example, a 300GB file server disk, is the XO_DELTA... drive a full 300GB like it says or only the changed amount?
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