DokuWiki » Infrastructure » Disaster Recovery

h1. VirtualBox 4.0 VM disaster recovery

h1. Backup (export VMs)

h2. Requirements

To backup the VMs you will need the following:

* @root@ access to the virtualbox-host (SSH or local)

* @vbox_control.sh@ script, which is not part of VirtualBox

h2. Preliminary Note

While a virtual machine could be imaged and restored like a phyisical machine using this method has the advantage that all meta-data like memory size, number of processors or MAC-adr of each NIC are saved as well. By restoring the virtual machine to another host you could do a perfect clone of the original machine.

*The virtual machines must be powered off during the backup.*

h2. Start Export

The VM-Export process is a three stage process:

* show the VMs currently running

* read in the VM-names to be saved from config file @/etc/virtualbox/machines_enabled_export@

* stop the machines if they are running in the sequence given in the config file

* export each VM with current date in the filename into the current workingdirectory

* read in the VM-names to be started at boottime from config file @/etc/virtualbox/machines_enabled_start@

* start the machines in the sequence given in the config file

<pre><code class="bash">

cd ~

/usr/local/bin/backup_vm.sh

</code></pre>

the @backup_vm.sh@ is a very simple shell-script doing:

<pre>

/etc/init.d/vboxcontrol status

/etc/init.d/vboxcontrol export

/etc/init.d/vboxcontrol start

exit 0

</pre>

h1. Restore (Import)

If the virtual machine already exists, we have to delete it first.

<pre><code class="bash">

VBoxManage unregistervm example_VM --delete

</code></pre>

The VM-Import process is fairly simple

* goto the folder where your @.ova@ resides (@/mnt/extUSBdrive/VM_Backup@ needs to be replaced with your source-directory, @example_VM_110509.ova@ needs to be replaced with the actual backup of your VM)

* import with @VBoxManage@

<pre><code class="bash">

cd /mnt/extUSBdrive/VM_Backup

VBoxManage import example_VM_110509.ova

</code></pre>

h1. alternative ways of export/import

give the VirtualBox manual a chance. It can be found at http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/UserManual.pdf