virtualbox.org

Hi Folks,

I know that this topic has been discussed in the past, but are there any new developments to backup
a huge vdi (250 GB) using snapshots to another machine, taking reasonable time (shutdown time not
longer than 15 minutes), without editing the xml configuration???
I cannot copy the whole vdi because it takes too much time.

Thanx for any suggestion...

How can you limit the backup time to 15 minutes when you don't know how much data needs to be backed up?

I would say, forget snapshots as they have nothing to do with making backups. Investigate differential backup tools such as rsync.

IMHO TS will need snapshot. Backing up virtual disk that is opened for writing by VM is not very smart.
See neighbour theme.

If your time constraint is just the downtime for the VM then a temporary snapshot could solve it:
- Shutdown your VM
- Create a snapshot
- Start your VM ( --> downtime just some seconds to a few minutes)
- Copy the "clean shutdown" base VDI file to the backup location
- Remove the snapshot

This way you only have an active snapshot for the duration of the copy process.

none wrote:IMHO TS will need snapshot. Backing up virtual disk that is opened for writing by VM is not very smart.
See neighbour theme.

Very same discussion indeed. Please read my different comments on the other topic for more info on why you need it.