Backing Up a Running Virtual Machine

Note: The virtual machine (VM) backup and recovery feature is a Technology Preview only and is under development for potential availability in a future release. Access to the feature requires a separate license and is disabled by default. The feature is not supported nor intended for use in production environments. Contact your authorized service provider for more information.

Back up a running VM to save a backup of the VM to a network-mounted folder or to a USB device. Backing up a VM on the ztC Edge system makes the VM image available for recovery on the same ztC Edge system or on another ztC Edge system, as described in Recovering a Virtual Machine from a Backup. You can also optionally configure a third-party, network-based backup solution to collect the files from the backup location on a regular basis for additional redundancy. Alternatively, you can create a backup by exporting a VM from a system as standard Open Virtualization Format (OVF) and Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) files, as described in Exporting a Virtual Machine; however, you can export a VM only while the VM is stopped.

Note: Backing up or exporting VMs is particularly important for VMs on a single-node system. In the event of a failure or loss of the original VM, you can use the backup files to recover the VM (see Recovering a Virtual Machine from a Backup), or the OVF and VHD files to restore the VM (see Replacing/Restoring a Virtual Machine from an OVF File).

Prepare for backing up a VM by inserting a USB device or by creating a network-mounted folder to store backups in your environment. If you are using a USB device, insert it into the current primary node of the system (displayed as noden (primary) on the Physical Machines page). If you are using a folder, create a folder for either a Windows share or a Network File System (NFS) export. A Windows share is also known as a Common Internet File System (CIFS) share (Samba, for example). Then mount the folder or USB device in the host operating system of the ztC Edge system, as described in this topic. When you initiate a backup in the ztC Edge Console, the ztC Edge system saves the VM as Extensible Markup Language (XML) and raw hard disk data files.

Notes:

By default, all backups are considered crash-consistent backups, similar to the system crashing or being powered off unexpectedly. Any data that is cached or in flight at the time of the backup might be lost unless you close all running applications for the duration of the backup, or shut down the guest VM and export it (see Exporting a Virtual Machine) as an alternative method for the VM image backup.
The time required for the backup depends on the size and number of volumes in the source VM as well as network bandwidth. For example, transferring a VM with one 20 GB boot disk over a 1Gb network may take about 30 minutes.
If you will continue to use the source VM after restoring it, remember to set a different MAC address and IP address for the VM when you recover it on the target system.
If the ztC Edge system switches from the primary PM to the secondary PM during a backup, the process fails. This does not affect the continuous uptime of the system. You can delete the partially backed up files from the network-mounted folder and back up the VM again.
The maximum size of VM volume data that you can back up to an external file share or USB device formatted as a FAT or VFAT file system is 4 GB, even if the total size of the target device is much larger. If you attempt to back up data more than 4 GB to a FAT or VFAT file system, the backup will fail.
You cannot back up an unprotected VM. For more information, see Unprotected Operation.

Prerequisites:

Ensure that the VM is in the running state and healthy. You cannot back up a VM if it is stopped.
Prepare the backup destination:
- If you are using a USB device, insert it into the current primary node of the system (displayed as noden (primary) on the Physical Machines page). Confirm that the system displays the USB device. Navigate to the Physical Machines page. Click the node into which you inserted the device, and in the lower pane, select the USB Device tab. The USB device you inserted should appear in the tab's display.
- If you are using a network-mounted folder for a Windows/CIFS share or an NFS export, create the folder in your environment where you can store the VM backup. Set full read/write permissions on the network-mounted folder to permit file transfers, or, for a Windows/CIFS share only, assign read/write permissions to a specific user on the system/domain that hosts the share. Record the URL or pathname of the NFS export or CIFS share as well as the username/password of the CIFS share, which you use when you back up the VM.
- Ensure that the backup destination has enough storage space for the VMs that you want to back up.

To back up a VM

Log on to the ztC Edge system with the ztC Edge Console.
On the Physical Machines page (see the Physical Machines Page), verify that both PMs are in the running state and that neither PM is in maintenance mode or in the process of synchronizing.
On the Virtual Machines page, select the VM that you want to back up and ensure that it is in the running state and healthy. See the Virtual Machines Page.
With the VM selected, click Backup in the bottom pane.
In the backup wizard, select one of the following:

Note: If you have already mounted a location using the Mount button (as described in Mounting a USB Device or Network-mounted Folder on the ztC Edge System), the backup wizard displays the mounted device URL in green. To change it, click the Change button.
- Mount device via Windows Share (CIFS/SMB)
  
  The backup destination is a folder on a CIFS share. Enter a Username, Password, and Repository value. For Repository, enter a value in the format \\machine_URL\ShareName (for example, \\192.168.1.34\MyBackupVMs).
- Mount device via NFS
  
  The backup destination is a folder on a remote system, accessed through NFS. Enter a Repository value, which is the URL of the remote system, in the format nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn (do not include http:// or https://).
- Mount USB
  
  For USB partition list, select a partition from the pull-down menu.
For Backup Path: /mnt/ft-export:, type the path of the location where you want the VM backup files to be stored. For example, if you want to back up the VM to a new folder named ocean1, type ocean1.
Click Mount.

If the mount succeeds, the repository appears under Device URL and the Backup VM button becomes active; otherwise, an alert appears.
Click Backup VM to back up the VM.

You can monitor the Backup Status in the Summary tab for the VM that you are backing up. When the process is complete, the status changes to Backup completed successfully.

To cancel the backup, click Cancel next to the Backup progress percentage. A dialog box opens, asking you to confirm the cancellation. Click Yes to cancel.

The ztC Edge system backs up the volumes first, then it backs up the XML metadata file. You can confirm that the process is finished when the XML file appears in the folder.

After the backup process, if you need to recover the VM, see Recovering a Virtual Machine from a Backup.

To unmount the device, see Mounting a USB Device or Network-mounted Folder on the ztC Edge System.

Backing Up a Running Virtual Machine

To back up a VM

To clean up after a canceled or failed backup from the ztC Edge system

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