snapshots and backups from ZFS storage

[vkhera]

I'm running 4.0 beta, and I'm trying to figure out how safe the backups are for a live running machine. By safe, I mean they restore everything at an exact consistent state.

My VM's are configured to use a local ZFS storage, so the virtual drives are raw zvol's on the base system.

On my backups, I select the mode "snapshot". I'm not sure this is supposed to take a ZFS snapshot on the zvol when backing up, but I do not see any during that time.

Does the snapshot backup method work on live VMs with ZFS backed virtual disks? By "work" I mean takes a point-in-time backup of all the disks. It was a bit unclear from reading in the forum and the wiki about how snapshots work with ZFS. If I take an explicit snapshot using the GUI, I do see zfs snapshots for the zvols.

 

[mir]

If you remember to check 'Include RAM' in snapshot it works.

 

[dietmar]

By "work" I mean takes a point-in-time backup of all the disks.

It makes a point-in-time backup of all the disks, but it does not use ZFS snapshots to achieve that.

 

[vkhera]

If you remember to check 'Include RAM' in snapshot it works.

The manual snapshots seem to work either way. The main concern is the backups. There is no option to include RAM in the automated backup screen.

 

[vkhera]

It makes a point-in-time backup of all the disks, but it does not use ZFS snapshots to achieve that.

Wonderful! That's exactly what I had hoped. Thanks for the reply.