BRRABill's Field Report With XenServer
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@wrx7m said:
For people using Xen or KVM, what do you use for backups?
Well....
- XenServer, but not Xen otherwise, can do backups via Xen Orchestra
- Unitrends has a XenServer API based offering for commercial image based backups
- StorageCraft is being used by several people that I know.
- NAUBackup is available for free for Xen, it's a script
- Any agent based traditional backup works just fine.
- Our KVM is from Scale and Scale has a backup mechanism included
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@Dashrender yes, exactly. The size on disk will remain large even if the file system is unused. It's useful info, but not the info he's expecting.
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@BRRABill said:
@scottalanmiller said:
That is showing the size on disk, not the amount used in the FS. You don't know how much the disk itself has used.
I guess that is what I am looking to find out.
How much space the virtual disk is taking up on the host storage drive.
Not that you shouldn't want to know that but, I'm wondering, how do you intend to use that information? How will it help you with decision making?
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@DustinB3403 At the hypervisor level. I am most familiar with VMware and I use Veeam.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Not that you shouldn't want to know that but, I'm wondering, how do you intend to use that information? How will it help you with decision making?
I guess I was just curious.
If I am taking the approach of ... just install and not worry, then I in reality don't really need to know.
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I'm sure that it is often handy to know which VM is eating up space in case you are going to go do some storage load balancing. But in a case where you are preparing to do that, running a du command against the storage is pretty trivial.
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@scottalanmiller
My XS (through XC) is showing I have 1.5 TB allocated, but only 1.1 TB of actual storage.
Now currently I'm running a backup of the 700 GB system, so I'm wondering - is the allocated counting both the snap shot and the live running disk, plus my other few VMs in that total of 1.5 TB? that would add up about right.
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Yes, the snaps should be included in the used figure.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Yes, the snaps should be included in the used figure.
that's just strange to me because, clearly the Snap isn't 700+ GB, because if it was, I'd be 500 GB short on storage.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Yes, the snaps should be included in the used figure.
that's just strange to me because, clearly the Snap isn't 700+ GB, because if it was, I'd be 500 GB short on storage.
Why does that seem strange, what am I missing?
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Well - what does allocated mean to you? It means in use.
Though I've seen allocated to mean - I have allocated this VHD to 1 TB, though when setup with Thin Provisioning.. it will only grow as things push it into actual needed space. As mentioned previously it won't shrink (at least not on it's own) when things are deleted from the filesystem inside the VHD. So in that case allocated means max usable, even though it's not what's currently in use.
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The snapshot (from what I can see) allocates the exact same amount of space.
So if the virtual disk is allocated 100GB, the snapshot will also be allocated 100GB.
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@Dashrender said:
Well - what does allocated mean to you? It means in use.
Though I've seen allocated to mean - I have allocated this VHD to 1 TB, though when setup with Thin Provisioning.. it will only grow as things push it into actual needed space. As mentioned previously it won't shrink (at least not on it's own) when things are deleted from the filesystem inside the VHD. So in that case allocated means max usable, even though it's not what's currently in use.
Snaps are not part of that pool, though.
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Not part of what pool?
Here it's showing everything together.
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Snaps are not part of the "amount I intended to allocated with the main disks." Snaps are extra on top of that.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Snaps are not part of the "amount I intended to allocated with the main disks." Snaps are extra on top of that.
Then why list it in the allocated pool?
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Snaps are not part of the "amount I intended to allocated with the main disks." Snaps are extra on top of that.
Then why list it in the allocated pool?
Because it IS allocated and using space. It has to be shown.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Snaps are not part of the "amount I intended to allocated with the main disks." Snaps are extra on top of that.
Then why list it in the allocated pool?
Because it IS allocated and using space. It has to be shown.
where is it using 700 GB? it can't be - I simply don't have 700 for it to be using.
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@Dashrender said:
where is it using 700 GB? it can't be - I simply don't have 700 for it to be using.
That's the max size it could ever be. A duplicate of the amount for the drive it is snapshotting. (Is that a word?)
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Snaps are not part of the "amount I intended to allocated with the main disks." Snaps are extra on top of that.
Then why list it in the allocated pool?
Because it IS allocated and using space. It has to be shown.
where is it using 700 GB? it can't be - I simply don't have 700 for it to be using.
It's not, that's thin provisioning, isn't it?
