From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Steve Lorimer Subject: How to do an automated backup? Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:32:29 -0500 Message-ID: <490F51CD.8050505@kmbc.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: kvm@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Received: from mail.kmbc.edu ([12.197.71.19]:36319 "EHLO mail.kmbc.edu" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751930AbYKCTci (ORCPT ); Mon, 3 Nov 2008 14:32:38 -0500 Received: from home.kmbc.edu (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by mail.kmbc.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id E779F4742B for ; Mon, 3 Nov 2008 14:32:36 -0500 (EST) Received: from [192.168.6.51] (wireless.kmbc.edu [192.168.1.11]) by home.kmbc.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5716714F76E for ; Mon, 3 Nov 2008 14:32:34 -0500 (EST) Sender: kvm-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Ok, should be a simple question here: How to backup a KVM host image. My first plan - failure: 1) Suspend / hibernate (using virsh ... save) image to disk 2) Backup vm disk image & suspend file 3) Backup .xml 4) Restore suspended image This would accomplish a backup that could be reactivated very quickly as bootup would not even be required. However, in testing it failed. Of two VM's tried, one worked, but the other one never came back up. The network interface never reenabled and this system itself sat maxing out it's cpu core until manually terminated. My second plan: 1) Use virsh to shutdown the VM 2) Backup vm file & xml 3) Start vm (regular bootup) This takes longer, but can be tolerated in order to get a backup. However, this fails also: virsh -c qemu:///system shutdown kvmtest The command fails to send any kind of shutdown request to the VM guest. As a result, the only thing that works is to kill it (the virsh command for that does work). However, this is not acceptable for a backup. Nothing out of the ordinary in my system setup: VM Server: Ubuntu Server Guest OS's: Also Ubuntu Any thoughts, advice?