@tony I guess that's not too hard. I created another remote just for this backup, seems to be working fine, thanks.

@julien-f Thanks for the reply. What do you mean by "restoring the XO Config"? I restored our metadata backup, what further steps do I need to do?

@olivierlambert Thanks for the reply. I just gave it a try, and it's very hard to find where the backup XVA actually ends up. It's mixed up with all the other backups, each in a folder named with ID codes that don't seem to correspond with anything visible in the XO interface.

Apart from creating a seperate target remote exclusively for this backup, is there a way of finding out (or specifying) which folder the XVA backup will go to?

Hi, I'm thinking the easiest way to backup and recover our XO installation is to just export the entire VM regularly, and in the event of a disaster import the XVA with XCP-NG Centre.

Is there some way of scheduling a regular XVA export of a VM? I couldn't find any information in the documentation on what file format a "Full Backup" uses.

If not via XO GUI, can it be done via script or something? It would need to be an export of a running VM, though, which I think is an XO-specific feature?

Hi, I'm currently testing disaster recovery for my organisation. I tried restoring a metadata backup with a fresh trial XOA install.

All the VM host were restored, but in the "Backup > Health" section we have a lot of "Detached Backups". What does this mean, precisely?

Is there a way to backup and restore metadata so that everything is exactly the same, without this problem?

@olivierlambert said in When VM has changes from latest snapshot?:

This will be released tomorrow or Wednesday (a "check" mark on the VM parent snapshot)

I just tried it out, thanks so much! It works pretty well, just missing one thing.

Would it be possible to give an additional or different icon to indicate that the VM state has deviated from the parent snapshot? For example, a Tilde ~ symbol.

So the process looks like this:

(When reverting to snapshot.)

1. Revert to snapshot -> parent snapshot gets a "check" mark, mouseover text "current snapshot".

2. If I boot the VM, the check mark immedately turns into a tilde, mouseover text "current snapshot (changed)"

(When creating a snapshot with the VM shut down)

1. Create a snapshot -> new snapshot gets a "check" mark, mouseover text "current snapshot".

2. If I boot the VM, the check mark immedately turns into a tilde, mouseover text "current snapshot (changed)"

(When creating a snapshot with the VM already running)

1. Create a snapshot -> new snapshot gets a tilde, mouseover text "current snapshot (changed)"

@olivierlambert Sorry for the late reply. Here's some screenshots of a more complex scenario. VirtualBox's GUI isn't very good, so it can look a bit confusing. I'll try to explain what is happening as best as I can.

Here's a VM where we have several snapshots in two branches. You can see the main line of Release Candidate snapshots from 1 to 4.

At some point we went back to RC2, and made some changes to that snapshot, and made a new series of snapshots "Release Candidate 2 alternative"

In the image above, we have restored the RC3 snapshot, and booted it / made modifications. The "current state" icon is basically the most recently restored or taken snapshot. When you boot the VM, it's the snapshot closest to what you will see. As soon as you boot and the state of the VM changes, you'll see "Current State (changed)" instead. If we didn't like the changes, we could shut down the VM, restore the RC3 snapshot, and the icon will change to "Current State" again.

In the image above, we continued working on the RC3 snapshot with further changes, and created a snapshot branch "Release Candidate 3 alternative"

So yeah, that's how VirtualBox works. I'm not really asking for the multi-branch functionality in XO, but like I said, it would be nice to see which snapshot was most recently restored/taken, and whether the VM has been booted / modified since that snapshot.

@olivierlambert Here's how VirtualBox does it.

When the VM is the same as snapshot:

After the VM is run and has changed:

It also works when you have multiple different snapshots, or branches of snapshots - it will tell you which snapshot the current state is based on, and whether it has changed.

I guess in XO, you could have "Current State" or "Current State (changed)" next to the snapshot in the snapshots tab. Or icons representing them.

@olivierlambert Hmm, I haven't fully thought through all the implications, but doesn't this mean that the VMs we copy back to the original site are now "new" VMs, with unique UUIDs, etc? And things like log history, etc are all reset?
VM

Can we just export the VDI data from the backup and import it into the original VM? If the backup VM was run with a fast clone, will this work properly?

@phantomtypist Hi, see my latest reply or my edit to the OP for a workaround.