Integrity Virtual Machine - Disaster Recovery ??

[Aco Blazeski]

Hi everyone,

I have installed guest (hostname: VM1) HP-UX 11v3 on a host HP-UX 11v2.
Virtual disk attached to VM1 is a physical disk (disk scsi 0 0 0 0 0 disk /dev/rdsk/c8t0d4). Installation went without problems, a VM1 is working ok.

So my question is: is there a way to backup whole disk outside the virtual machine ??

I've made successful DR when virtual disk is a file - so it is easy, I backup only one file,but I have no idea with whole disk.

Your time and know-how will be appreciated,
Thanks

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

Shalom,

http://docs.hp.com/en/IUX/

make_net_recovery will write a recovery image to an NFS share. make_rec_recovery will write directly to tape.

SEP

[Torsten.]

IMHO the recommended method to backup a guest is to use ignite (run it directly from the guest).

[Aco Blazeski]

Thanks people,

These suggestions are for DR from inside guest I believe.

Do you think if I use "dd if=/dev/rdsk/c8t0d4 of=/some_dir/some_file" and then use some_file as virtual disk, will work ???

regards,

[melvyn burnard]

This is something I discuss with the customers when I install and configure Virtual Machines, how do you back up the Guest OS?
Do you look at this from the Guest or Host OS perspective?

Each OS that is supported as a guest can use it's own utilities/software (such as Ignite for HP-UX)to backup itself, but would need either an attached Tape Unit, or a networked backup solution.
This would allow you to backup from inside the guest.

BUT (and this I stress) what if the Guest OS is unavailable?

The next option is to look at backing up from the Host OS perspective.
If you have used a file as a backing store, dead easy, just tar/cpio/pax it off, or use DP, or other software.
If you have used an Lvol, or a PV or a LUN, this gest a little more difficult.
If you use Logical Volumes, you can mirror these, or use Raid Array LUN's to mirror to.
Generally, most of the installations I do have the Guest OS backing store sat out on an array somewhere, so there is the array protection, multipath [protection etc, but there still exists the chance of losing the Guest OS, so then I suggest you need to look at using something like dd, but bear in mind the issues involved with dd, in that it is a dumb utiltiy. If it hits a bad bit, it copies that bad bit.
The other solution would be to have a backup software utility that could copy from a raw disk to a tape unit sopmewhere.


Lot sto think about, and just my two pence worth

[Aco Blazeski]

For the record: dd trick does the job. I've dd whole disk to a file, then recreated the virtual machine (same number of CPUs,memory,ethernet...) and added file as virtual disk. It runs ok.
However dd is not practical - it is too slow so it can;t be used as a real DR strategy. So I believe that I will go with file as a virtual disk.

Thanks to all for your time and effort.
Regards