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FORUMS arrow How-tos arrow General Q&A arrow vm backup
Topic Title: vm backup
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Created On: 12/27/2006 01:54 AM
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12/27/2006 01:54 AM
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bhohman
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Posts: 1
Joined: 12/27/2006

I read thru the pdf on setting up and found no description on how to backup running virtual machines (the disccusion was on backing up the admin database). This is our big issue with VMWare's low end product line. In order to backup running machines with their Server product (which is free), you have to shut down the instance, make a backup using the windows interface (script or explorer), and restart the vm. This means that your server is unavailable. If you are willing to spend money (a few thousand) you can use ESX and backup the running instances from the host server. This uses host cpu resources and reduces vm performance. If you want to spend several thousands, you can backup the running instances from a dedicated VMWare backup app as well as moving running machines from server to server. If there is a way to schedule a backup of a running machine to network storage (a shared windows folder or SAN volume)?
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12/27/2006 05:36 PM
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cbarclay
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Posts: 216
Joined: 04/28/2006

There are a few ways to back up virtual servers in version 3.1.

1) You can use standard backup software within the guest.
2) You can shut down the guest and clone the virtual hard disk. This is scriptable and takes a few minutes per guest, so the outage is very small.
3) You can snapshot the LUN the virtual hard disks are on (while the guests are live or stopped) and mount the snapshotted volume on another server. Then you can backup the virtual hard disks (which are files in the Microsoft VHD format) or mount the virtual hard disks and backup the files within the virtual server. The benefit of this method is the file-level backup occurs outside of the guest, so it does not take guest resources.
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03/14/2007 05:12 PM
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mkelson
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Joined: 03/14/2007

Vmware has a tool that runs within the guest which flushes writes and pauses disk access. This can be scripted such that you run the tool, take the snapshot and then resume disk access. Is this possible with VI?  
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03/14/2007 05:22 PM
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cbarclay
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Posts: 216
Joined: 04/28/2006

Virtual Iron by default flushes disk writes. Flushing disk writes without flushing application writes provides a partial solution. I would recommend you also use a third party tool such as Symantec Backup Exec to pause the application I/O before you perform a snapshot operation.
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FORUMS : How-tos : General Q&A : vm backup

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