Backup virtualbox without shutting it down

[Bogataj]

Helo all,

1st of all i am new, so if this has been answered please dont flame me, but point me into the right direction.

2nd thing is backups. I am running a server that needs to run 24/7. How do i backup this server without shutting it down? I am running virtual box on windows server 2008 r2. Till now, i have shut down the server, simply copied the whole VM folder and started it back up. The problem is that i have over 500gb of storage and its taking forever to copy it ... I read somewhere that i need to do the snap of virtual and than back up a snap. I know how to do a snapshot, but than what? Backing up just that snap isnt enought i guess ...or is it enought if i have 1 full back up and i make those snaps everyday and i can restore VM with 1 full backup and last snap?

Please point me into the right direction.

Regards

[BillG]

How would you backup a physical server which ran 24/7? Why would you use a different method for a vm server?

[Bogataj]

oh boy ...

[andyp73]

If you read the draft Snapshot Basics post from socratis you will see a big warning: Snapshots are NOT backups! If you try to rely on snapshots for backups then you are almost certainly going to run into trouble the day that you need to restore something.

The only VM that I have that runs critical software is setup to use bridged networking and so the backup manager sees it as another server on the network. It backs up the data files every day (full on Friday, incremental changes every other day) as BillG alluded to. Once per month, a script runs on the host which sleeps the VM, copies the whole VM folder and then wakes it up again.

-Andy.

[mpack]

The "live snapshot then backup the base VDI" technique requires a fair amount of VirtualBox expertise to get right. I would not recommend it.

As Bill said: use the same internal backup method you would with a physical server. Stop thinking that a VM has to do something different.