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Has anybody every successfully used NAUBackups for xenserver 6.5 and had their backups go to a SAN storage repository?

I see the default script backs up to an NFS share but I am trying to avoid NFS as backup location. I only want backups to our SAN.

Here's what I'm looking for:

  • SAN backup location, not NFS
  • NAUBackup
womble
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jrd1989
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1 Answers1

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Since the backup location is just a path that you pass to NAUBackup, you can point it to wherever you have mounted your SAN storage and let it store the backups there.

I assume you're using the SAN already as SR for the XenServer, so you can just re-use it for backup as well or just create another SR just for the backups. We did it that way and just pointed NAUBackup to the mounted SR:

backup_dir=/var/run/sr-mount/afacf395-5036-4bb2-b379-cbb84c7b4b85

I know, that's not the perfect solution and a bit hacky, but it served us quite well for some time now.

micxer
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  • Thanks for the response. I consoled to my server and tried going to /var/run/sr-mount/ location but the only SR there is my iso nfs stored on a synology server, not the SR created to host vms or store backups. Those SR's are the luns created on my md3660i san. Any thoughts? – jrd1989 Sep 02 '15 at 21:31
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    Without having used iSCSI on Linux or with XenServer before: AFAIK the connected LUN should show up as additional block device under /dev/sd*. I would guess, that XenServer doesn't do much magic here and does the same. Can you find the SR there? – micxer Sep 02 '15 at 21:45
  • Yes, from the console of the server when I log into the san using: iscsiadm --mode discovery --type sendtargets --portal [ip] and then run fdisk -l I see a drive for my one lun - /dev/sdc. – jrd1989 Sep 03 '15 at 13:30
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    Sounds about the right direction. You should be able to see where it was mounted by Xen. Of course the cleaner version would be to have a separate mount point on another LUN to have more control of how much space your backups occupy. – micxer Sep 04 '15 at 07:38
  • I was able to setup a server with centos on it, expose the luns, mount them as partitions and mount them as NFS shares in xen so NAUbackups is working now. The only issue I'm having is getting email notifications to work. I downloaded the latest version here: https://github.com/NAUbackup/VmBackup and followed the install instructions but I can't get email to work. Any suggestions or tips? – jrd1989 Sep 15 '15 at 15:02
  • @jrd1989 Great you made it work. Can you send e-mail from the command line (like `echo "My message" | mail -s subject user@gmail.com`)? If not, that might be your problem, if so, check the mail server settings of your system and update the script accordingly. Also NAUBackup directly connects to the given SMTP server. If that needs credentials, you have to change the `VmBackup.py` to include those. – micxer Sep 17 '15 at 22:34
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    I actually came across this patch which solved my issues: https://github.com/codedmind/VmBackup/commit/0d6960e84adafe83ab16346095d94994d3237009 – jrd1989 Sep 18 '15 at 16:24
  • When NAUbackups take a snapshot of the server, does it include the disk and the memory, or just the disk? I need to be able to revert back to specific point in time with my backups in case something goes wrong. Is this possible with NAUbackups or should I look elsewhere? Thanks! – jrd1989 Sep 23 '15 at 20:09
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    NAUbackup just employs the regular `xe vm-snapshot` command. If you have a look at the XenServer Administration Guide (http://support.citrix.com/servlet/KbServlet/download/38321-102-714737/XenServer-6.5.0_Administrators%20Guide.pdf), you will find information at chapter 8.10 and especially 8.10.3 & 8.10.5 how to snapshot with memory. This however won't work with creating a template (that discards the memory information) and I'm not sure it works with `vm-export` either. Altogether it might be possible, but you need to change NAUbackup yourself to what yo asked for. – micxer Sep 24 '15 at 21:47
  • NAUbackups offers the option of raw and vhd backups. What is the difference between the two and is one recommended over the other? – jrd1989 Apr 01 '16 at 19:33
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    We only use the `vm-snapshot variant` and it works well for us so I can't tell you exactly what's the difference. I only noticed there is a new version because of your comment. If you are curious, please refer to the manual of XenServer. – micxer Apr 04 '16 at 19:28