| Q: Backup Client on Physical Host to pull data from VZhosts ? [message #8712] |
Mon, 04 December 2006 14:32  |
tchipman
Messages: 28
Registered: June 2006
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Junior Member |
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I'm curious if there is a recommended (or functional?) way for me to use a backup client (in my case, Legato Networker, but this will probably chance sometime this year) running on the physical-hardware OS instance, so that I can backup selected directories for various virtual hosts.
ie,
-physical host runs the backup client
-vzhosts exist for mail, public web, private web
--thus I would like to backup files under
(a) physical host - critical config info from /etc
(b) vzhosts: data from locations such as
--- /vz/private/100/var/mail
--- /vz/private/101/var/www
--- /vz/private/102/var/www
this access will (clearly) be read-only, and again only for very specific directories.
I know that it is "not recommended" to access /vz/private content directly from the physical host .. but I'm curious if there is some way to get data backed up easily from the virtual hosts, without having to resort to installing a backup client (and license per virtual host client..) into each virtual host.
I'd be perfectly happy doing something like soft-links, etc. Ideally if this can be done without taking the vzhosts offline that would be preferred, of course. (presumably if I disable a given host, I would then be able to backup its /vz/private directories with impunity...? but the disruption of service for doing backups is less-than-desirable..)
Many thanks for help with this,
Tim Chipman
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| Re: Q: Backup Client on Physical Host to pull data from VZhosts ? [message #8716 is a reply to message #8712] |
Mon, 04 December 2006 15:28  |
rickb
Messages: 368
Registered: October 2006
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Senior Member |
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Hi Tim,
There is no problem with access the VE files from the HN, copying /vz/private/VEID/path/to/file to /root, even while the VE is running. As with any server, if you want a 100% bulletproof backup, you will need to stop the software/server and then create a backup of its files so that the applications can definitely commit their data to the disk. However, if your applications do not store much data in memory (the data on disk is enough to get the apps back to a running state), you can safely create a backup of the VE files while the VE is running.
For a backup method, I would check out tar with the incremental option. This does a great job of creating incremental backups and storing them as one file, which you can then move to another server for safety. Using this, you can create a backup of the entire VE, not just specific directories. I feel the file storage overhead is worth it because restoring from the backups is a breeze. Also since the system files won't change often, only your initial tar backup archives them.
Hope this helps.
Rick Blundell
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Common Terms I post with: http://wiki.openvz.org/Category:Definitions
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