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Re: snapshots, backups of running VMs and compute node recovery

 

Hi Jānis,

Yes, by deleted I mean clear all related VM entries in DB. I don't
know how to do that for the moment.

Édouard.

On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 10:46 AM, Jānis Ģeņģeris
<janis.gengeris@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> What do you mean with deleting all servers? If the node is down, then all
> the VM data is gone too, or you are talking about DB entries?
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 11:08 AM, Édouard Thuleau <thuleau@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> I try to implement a simple way to automate the backup mechanism (eg.
>> every day): https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/backup-schedule
>>
>> And I though of a solution to respond to your needs: when a node fails
>> (for any reasons), I disable it, I delete all servers was running on
>> it and I restart them from the last available backup.
>>
>> Édouard.
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 8:45 PM, Vishvananda Ishaya
>> <vishvananda@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> >
>> > The libvirt driver has actually gotten quite good at rebuilding all of
>> > the data for instances. This only thing it can't do right now is redownload
>> > base images from glance. With current state if you simply back up the
>> > instances directory (usually /var/lib/nova/instances) then you can recover
>> > by bringing back the whole directory and doing a nova reboot <uuid> for each
>> > instance.
>> >
>> > You could just stick the whole thing on an lvm and snaphot it regularly
>> > for dr. The _base directory can be regenerated with images from glance so
>> > you could also write a script to regenerate it and not have to worry about
>> > backing it up. The code to add to nova to make it automatically re-download
>> > the image from glance if it isn't there shouldn't be too bad either, which
>> > would mean you could safely ignore the _base directory for backups.
>> > Additionally using qcow images in glance and the config option
>> > `force_raw_images=False` will keep this directory much smaller.
>> >
>> > Vish
>> >
>> >
>> > On Nov 9, 2012, at 2:51 AM, Jānis Ģeņģeris <janis.gengeris@xxxxxxxxx>
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> > Hello all,
>> >
>> > I would like to know the available solutions that are used regarding to
>> > backing up and/or snapshotting running
>> > instances on compute nodes. Documentation does not mention anything
>> > related to this. With snapshots I don't mean
>> > the current snapshot mechanism, that imports image of the running VM
>> > into glance. I'm using KVM, but this is
>> > significant for any hypervisor.
>> >
>> > Why is this important?
>> > Consider simple scenario when hardware on compute node fails and the
>> > node goes down immediately and is not recoverable
>> > in reasonable time. The images of the running instances are also lost.
>> > Shared file system is not considered here as it
>> > may cause IO bottlenecks and adds another layer of complexity.
>> >
>> > There have been a few discussions on the the list about this problem,
>> > but none have really answered the question.
>> >
>> > The documentation speaks of disaster recovery when power loss have
>> > happened and failed compute node recovery from
>> > shared file system. But don't cover the case without shared file system.
>> >
>> > I can think of few solutions currently (for KVM):
>> > a) using LVM images for VMs, and making LVM logical volume snapshots,
>> > but then the current nova snapshot mechanism
>> > will not work (from the docs - 'current snapshot mechanism in OpenStack
>> > Compute works only with instances backed
>> > with Qcow2 images');
>> > b) snapshot machines with OpenStack snapshotting mechanism, but this
>> > doesn't fit somehow, because it has
>> > other goal than creating backups, will be slow and pollute the glance
>> > image space;
>> >
>> > Regards
>> > --janis
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~openstack
>> > Post to     : openstack@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~openstack
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>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
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>
>
>
>
> --
> --janis


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