[Xen-users] Backing up Xen DomU's - Tape Drive - LVM

[Keith Sudbury <keith@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I am planning the roll out of a Xen dom0 running CentOS that is going to be running two DomU's CentOS and Windows 2003 SBS. I am planning on using LVM for the disks as this (so i have read) increases i/o performance compared to image files.

I need a solution to back up these machines and I have came up with the following two ideas:

Idea 1,

Backup the machines as images (lvm snapshot?) and backup to a tape drive. However the 2003 SBS server will be running Exchange server and backing up the image while it runs is obviously not going to be possible as the databases will be in an open state? So I am wondering if pausing the DomU's and then backing them up to disk would work? (using xm pause). However what if the database was being written to at that some of the data could still be in memory? I would need to make a true snapshot of the whole disk including what is in memory to make this work?  Is this possible are any of you guy doing this? Another idea could be to make a script to unmount all the database and schedule the backup to run at the time the db's have stopped.

Idea 2,

Back up traditionally using a scsi tape drive. I am wondering if i attached the SCSI tape drive to the Dom0 would the DomU's be able to access the drive? I would obviously have to schedule the backups at different times otherwise the tape drive would be in use by the other DomU, if one DomU is using the tape drive would the other DomU's get some sort of busy signal if they attempted to use it?

Note, the server is only mainly going to be used during business hours some evening work etc, but no one is ever going to be using the server at like 3AM so pausing the DomU's at that time should not cause a problem.

Any ideas? Does anyone else have any suggestions / solutions I have not thought about?



Many Thanks

Keith

--
Keith Sudbury
Netzen Solutions Ltd

Web:	http://www.netzensolutions.com
Email:	keith@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Tel:	+44 (0)1225 588 588
Mob:	+44 (0)7970 165 190
Fax:	+44 (0)1225 580 061

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