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    XO cant Snapshot itself ?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Solved Xen Orchestra
    35 Posts 7 Posters 3.6k Views 7 Watching
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    • olivierlambertO Online
      olivierlambert Vates πŸͺ Co-Founder CEO
      last edited by olivierlambert

      Are you sure? It seems you did a snapshot on non-raw VM disk, which is OK. If you do a VM.snapshot, it will individually snapshot ALL the VM disk, including the raw ones. And this is when it breaks.

      I would be very happy to get snapshots on raw drives, but it's not physically possible with SMAPIv1.

      M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • M Offline
        Meth0d @olivierlambert
        last edited by

        @olivierlambert maybe i missunderstood things, the RAW Disk from my XO VM is the 7TB data disk "[NOBAK] xoa_backup_hdd".
        The system disk is "xoa_sda" is not RAW.

        So i thought excluding the disk with "[NOBAK]" would make me able to snapshot the VM (system disk). So whenever you have attached a RAW device makes you unable to snapshot the VM.

        Detaching it, taking a snapshot and reattaching it would work however?

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        • olivierlambertO Online
          olivierlambert Vates πŸͺ Co-Founder CEO
          last edited by

          • On XCP-ng 8.2: [NOBAK] will be only used by Xen Orchestra to NOT export the snapshot generated by VM.snapshot method.
          • On XCP-ng 8.3: [NOBAK] will be used by XO to exclude the disk from the VM.snaphot call during an XO backup (since we added that feature in XAPI ourselves)

          In any case, a manual snapshot will snap all the drives.

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          • M Offline
            Momi_V
            last edited by

            You can do this on the cli (in 8.3) via

            xe vm-snapshot new-name-label=newname uuid=vmUUID ignore-vdi-uuids=uuid1,uuid2,uuid3
            

            It is currently not possible in Xen-Orchestra, see
            https://xcp-ng.org/forum/topic/3607/snapshot-backup-exclude-additional-mounted-disk/8?_=1680267126156

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            • M Offline
              Meth0d @Momi_V
              last edited by

              Thanks for the heads up. A [NOSNAP] Feature sounds like a good idea though πŸ™‚

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              • olivierlambertO Online
                olivierlambert Vates πŸͺ Co-Founder CEO
                last edited by

                We have to discuss this internally with @julien-f πŸ™‚

                julien-fJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • planedropP Offline
                  planedrop Top contributor
                  last edited by

                  FYI just for future things, a generally better way to make greater than 2TiB disks is to simply span them within the guest OS, so basically for 7TiB just make like 4 2TiB VHD's and then have the VM OS span those disks so they appear as a single disk within the VM.

                  I do this all the time, works super well and gives you the ability to still snapshot them, etc....

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                  • M Offline
                    Meth0d @planedrop
                    last edited by

                    @planedrop are you using LVM for that or how are u doing that? I never bothered with the problem because i dont have enough local space for 8TB disk snapshots anyways.

                    planedropP 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • planedropP Offline
                      planedrop Top contributor @Meth0d
                      last edited by

                      @Meth0d Format wise I am using EXT so it's thin provisioned, and since it's all thin provisioned, snapshots only take up the space of the changes to the disk, so you don't really need enough space for 8TB snapshots.

                      As for LVM, you mean in the VMs to manage spanning? So far I've only really had a need to go beyond 2TiB for Windows VMs so I'm just using NTFS with Windows Disk Manager for those spans. But I imagine you could do it with LVM in Linux, not sure if there are better options for it.

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                      • julien-fJ Offline
                        julien-f Vates πŸͺ Co-Founder XO Team @olivierlambert
                        last edited by

                        @olivierlambert Does [NOSNAP] implies [NOBAK]?

                        If not, should we ignore [NOSNAP] when a snapshot is required to backup the VM?

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                        • olivierlambertO Online
                          olivierlambert Vates πŸͺ Co-Founder CEO
                          last edited by

                          That's a good question and an important choice to make πŸ€”

                          IMHO, the principle of least surprise would tell to ignore [NOSNAP] during a backup. Because I'm afraid people would backup a VM with [NOSNAP] and expect it to be saved. That would be a bad surprise if not. What do you think?

                          julien-fJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • julien-fJ Offline
                            julien-f Vates πŸͺ Co-Founder XO Team @olivierlambert
                            last edited by

                            @olivierlambert I think that [NOSNAP] means that this VDI should not be snapshotted and that ignoring it during backup would be surprising.

                            But your point is valid too, I have no ideal solution, hence my question ^^

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                            • julien-fJ Offline
                              julien-f Vates πŸͺ Co-Founder XO Team @julien-f
                              last edited by

                              I don't see a case where one would want [NOSNAP] but not [NOBAK]. Maybe we could require either none or both of them during a backup and not support one without the other?

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                              • olivierlambertO Online
                                olivierlambert Vates πŸͺ Co-Founder CEO
                                last edited by olivierlambert

                                The situation I can have in mind:

                                • you want your VM to be backup
                                • when you do a manual snapshot, you don't want to snap a disk

                                But why doing this? I don't know, it's hard to predict the need for this… At least, if we choose to NOT doing a backup of this disk with NOSNAP, we MUST tell that clearly in the doc.

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                                • W Offline
                                  wilsonqanda
                                  last edited by wilsonqanda

                                  @julien-f @olivierlambert
                                  Was there a resolution on the [NOSNAP] feature just much convenient than going to the CMD each time πŸ™‚ ?

                                  In the meantime will be using snippet below so low priority for me:

                                  xe vm-snapshot new-name-label=newname uuid=vmUUID ignore-vdi-uuids=uuid1,uuid2,uuid3
                                  
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                                  • olivierlambertO Online
                                    olivierlambert Vates πŸͺ Co-Founder CEO
                                    last edited by

                                    You mean [NOBAK]?

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                                    • W Offline
                                      wilsonqanda @olivierlambert
                                      last edited by wilsonqanda

                                      @olivierlambert Thanks for the quick reply. [NOBAK] works for backup by ignoring VDI with [NOBAK] in its name, but when running manual snapshot like stated above the [NOBAK] still show up in the SR meaning it made a copy of the [NOBACK].

                                      Ideally with [NOBAK] it should not take snapshot or backup right or am i understanding it incorrectly? Does this only apply to automated BACKUP & SNAPSHOT only?
                                      94bcd9f6-3051-46f1-91c8-729e4f289d43-image.png

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                                      • GheppyG Offline
                                        Gheppy
                                        last edited by Gheppy

                                        From my point of view, it should be with "OR" and if the condition is fulfilled to execute.
                                        E.g :

                                        • if I have "[NOSNAP] 'VM name' " not to execute snapshoot
                                        • if I have "[NOBAK] 'Vm name' " not to execute backup
                                        • if I have "[NOSNAP] [NOBAK] 'Vm name' " not to execute snapshot and backup
                                          But if you make a backup, remove only what is with [NOBAK]
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                                        • olivierlambertO Online
                                          olivierlambert Vates πŸͺ Co-Founder CEO
                                          last edited by

                                          Opinion @julien-f ?

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                                          • GheppyG Offline
                                            Gheppy
                                            last edited by

                                            This is what I was thinking

                                            • [NOSNAP] to be like SDA and disk 3
                                            • [NOBAK] to be with SDA and disk 2
                                            • In both cases disk 4 is excluded

                                            66a42055-8a10-4b46-a203-0dd3da2e9b54-image.png

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