Backup UI

[marcoczen]

Hi,

How do you guys do backups of your VM ?
Will cockpit have a backup module down the road ?

Thanks.

[marcoczen]

I am trying to remove the label 'enhancement' but cant ...I would prefer the label 'Discussion'
:-)

[marusak]

How do you guys do backups of your VM ?
Will cockpit have a backup module down the road ?

Cockpit has support for snapshoting. Is that you are asking about? https://cockpit-project.org/blog/cockpit-225.html

I am trying to remove the label 'enhancement' but cant ...I would prefer the label 'Discussion'

It is fine :) Notice, that there is also 'Discussions' for general questions.

[marcoczen]

Hi ..Is 'Backup' the same as 'snapshotting' ? I am too new to the KVM ecosystem to understand nuances if they do exist between these two terms.

I am thinking of 'Backup' in the regular sense, where if i needed i can do a 'Restore' and the VM is operational and accesible again?
Ideally i should be able to keep the backup in a NFS share or some other host ?

Something like the Proxmox Backup Server ?

[martinpitt]

"Snapshot" means that the current file system contents of the qcow2 VM file gets "remembered" and labelled; on restoring, it then gets reset to the previous state, so that any changes since the snapshot get reverted.

It has nothing to do with generic file backup where you copy a bunch of files/directories to some other place -- but that is not at all specific to VM management, you should just include the VM storage paths (/var/lib/libvirt/...) in your backup program.

So I misunderstood your question. There is no current Cockpit UI for controlling backup programs. There might be some day (possibly/hopefully also from some third party), but it's not currently planned.

[marcoczen]

Hi ..can we export the snapshot ? Is it a single file ? And then restore it in another host ( that is also running cockpit ) for example ?

[martinpitt]

At the moment, snapshots are stored inside the .qcow2 file. So in some sense you can restore it on another host by copying the whole VM. (This is independent of cockpit)

[marcoczen]

So copying out the qcow2 will allow me to re-import the VM into another cockpit installation ? Nice...
Any caveats ?

[marcoczen]

Ok noted. I understand that the snapshot is stored inside the qcow2 file.
And we can copy out the the whole .qcow2 to another host and recreate the VM there.

DO we need to stop the VM before we copy out the .qcow2 file ?

[martinpitt]

The Machines page's builtin migration feature can copy running VMs. But normal backup software or simple file copy is not aware of these files changing on the fly during copy, so VMs should better be shut down, yes.

[marcoczen]

Noted. Thanks.

Final clarification....Just wondering why something like 'Proxmox Backup Server' is not being considered for backing up cockpit VMs?
Not generic backups but specifically VMs ?

Or do i have to make a request to the cockpit-machines team ( https://github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit-machines ) ?

[martinpitt]

It's not like we'd say "no" to a backup UI (in fact, I think it'd be great to have one!) -- it's just like there is none right now, and difficult as backups are, there is currently no design idea/proposal what it should do, nor someone who has the time and desire to implement it 😁

[marcoczen]

Busy ? No problem. Many thanks.
Keep up the great work.

Closed.