XO Backup [NOBAK] for full backups
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Hi, I have a 3.4 TB video repository (as 2 disks due to the 2 TB limit) on a NAS attached to the VM that runs Zoneminder. It isn't necessary nor possible to create backups of that data.
Looking at XO Backup, I find mention that a disk whose name starts [NOBAK] will be ignored in Delta backups. Does that work? Github comments from a year ago make me think that it's still a work in progress.
That's what I need except: it's also necessary to do Full backups periodically and I understand Xen doesn't have a mechanism to ignore a disk when taking a snapshot, therefore nor does XO. Fair enough but, what about in the case of Snapshot Mode Offline?
It should be easy to script the XE CLI to (1) shut down the VM (2) detach the unwanted disks (3) take the snapshot (4) attach the disks (5) start the VM. Would that be a way for XO Backup to ignore disks flagged [NOBAK] on a full backup? Presumably XO Backup is already doing steps 1,3, and 5 for Snapshot Mode Offline. Adding 2 and 4 might not be much work and wouldn't even require UI changes.
Alternatively if there were a way to supply scripts that would add a lot of flexibility to XO Backup: e.g. pre-backup, post-snapshot/pre-export, post-backup.
Thoughts? I'm not much of a programmer but I'm happy to test...
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[NOBAK] works, at the transfer level. It means, the disk will be snapshot, but the data won't be export to the backup.
It's due to the fact we use
VM.snapshotmethod that doesn't allow to make a VM snapshot by excluding disks.We have an alternative in the pipes, working directly on disk level snapshot (
VDI.snapshot) that will solve this. -
Thanks @olivierlambert. Any thoughts on the pre / post backup scripts idea?
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Don't we have already some webhooks? Anyway, the VDI.snapshot method can be done in one or 2 releases, might worth to wait anyway
edit: we have indeed webhooks but for jobs, I wonder it might be trivial to get them for backup
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I'm waiting for the same feature. I have a surveillance camera VM with a 20TB array that I don't want to back up. I created an Ansible playbook to recreate just the OS in the event I needed to since I can't backup the VM but that is kinda a hack. I'd rather exclude the video footage array and backup the OS.
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Noted. Pinging @julien-f
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Just coming back to this: @olivierlambert
(1) what is the approximate timeframe for VDI.snapshot ?
(2) You said "we have indeed webhooks but for jobs, I wonder it might be trivial to get them for backup" - is that likely to happen soon?
I can't do the code but I can test... -
Here's another case in XCP-ng/Xen, which pre/post hooks for XO backups could be used to solve:
Any way to backup VM with USB attached?
There are many situations in which it would be desirable to shut down a VM before backup and start it up again afterwards, especially these cases in which a storage device or USB device needs to be detached or the backup won't run...
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Repinging @julien-f
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@normanghenderson I'm currently working on this feature, I had hoped to be able to release this for the September release but due to last minute issue it will likely be postponed for the end of October.
Note that this will ship in the proxy first before making its way to regular backups.
Best regards,
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@julien-f Thanks very much. Let me know when there is something to test.
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@normanghenderson Hi Julien, Happy New Year. Just touching base on this? I just made an attempt with xo-server 5.73.0 xo-web 5.76.0 and got the usual SR_OPERATION_NOT_SUPPORTED due to the large disk.
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I think it's coming this release, isn't it @julien-f ?
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@normanghenderson Yep, it should be coming at the end of the month
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@julien-f Excellent, thank you!
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Has this been implemented yet?
I've tried the [NOBAK] method, and the disk still gets cycled into the weekly VM backup. -
Running the latest xen orchestra. Just finished our latest weekly backup. It still backed up the 1TB disk I had labeled as [NOBAK].
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@mrbaz I don't think its been implemented yet. Its coming from what I've read though.
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It should be for this release, this time
@julien-f is working on it!
