From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Sep 27 14:12:12 2007 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5D0C716A420 for ; Thu, 27 Sep 2007 14:12:12 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from david.robillard@gmail.com) Received: from qb-out-0506.google.com (qb-out-0506.google.com [72.14.204.226]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 14B7E13C44B for ; Thu, 27 Sep 2007 14:12:11 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from david.robillard@gmail.com) Received: by qb-out-0506.google.com with SMTP id a10so179874qbd for ; Thu, 27 Sep 2007 07:12:11 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=beta; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:cc:mime-version:content-type; bh=sbNNLBP79NtrFT5/V2WDsK+nrG+j4Q0rSXTM+nPCmP4=; b=BbxtLMyzpfmIBVK/aJeK7Z0SC5rYxPmByqCyJnhX/xQB/B0bkr+vYTstEIILFMhv2+qgFuxhozQnD8nuuEwS/XFOsIbkOei5hJiAv8muA7X8kP0+S64r7pi9spCDj3OdmXJf0UYmq6o65yFJewzf+aBjP2rxxE6yi4El70SrMwI= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=beta; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:cc:mime-version:content-type; b=beoosBytrqYToeXLRo+uWQ9DQtovRuTFxBy7DooFOB7hbKmRJxoC42JL68hy94fEb5wgsuLA8pjFb6Q9dw30coOV2xlcdvpO1OzHU1qeoA8ztz/oukbuWsWGETD09yvYQVUQXnrzfCBqbSwJ0IwLJqfg+n2m51turYTqTJ/abIY= Received: by 10.141.35.21 with SMTP id n21mr871163rvj.1190902330688; Thu, 27 Sep 2007 07:12:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.141.37.6 with HTTP; Thu, 27 Sep 2007 07:12:10 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <226ae0c60709270712h3f862342t65da549364a4f3d5@mail.gmail.com> Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2007 10:12:10 -0400 From: "David Robillard" To: "Terry Sposato" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.5 Cc: FreeBSD Questions Subject: Re: Backup Solution X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2007 14:12:12 -0000 > I am relatively new to the FreeBSD game and have a bit of a problem which I > am not sure how to tackle. I recently build a server running VMWare ESX > Server 3 which will eventually run 6-7 small production VM's. These Virtual > Machines obviously have the need for backups and it poses quite a problem > for me unless I connect 6-7 external tape drives and give each VM it's own > tape device. I have looked into a few solutions using VM products > (consolidated backup) but it can only be done if you utilise a SAN. > > The server is running RAID 5 with around 700GB of space. Each VM may take up > to 50GB and backups might be around 15-20GB per VM. The machine itself has > an internal LTO3 tape drive, has anyone come across this kind of situation > before, and if so what would be a good way to backup each VM? It is easy > enough to backup the image files from the host machine but I need file level > backups within each VM also. > > I will be very grateful for suggestions or ways people have tackled this > kind of problem in a production environment. We use rdiff-backup to perform incremental backups of VMWare machine files. It works very well. Check it out at http://www.nongnu.org/rdiff-backup/ Let me know if you need help on the setup. On the other hand, if you prefer to backup the VMWare machines as if they were physical ones, then I suggest rsnapshot. Of course, this will only work with UNIX VMs. More info here http://www.rsnapshot.org/ Have fun, David -- David Robillard UNIX systems administrator & Oracle DBA CISSP, RHCE & Sun Certified Security Administrator Montreal: +1 514 966 0122