Backup

As you know sNow! consists on one or more sNow! nodes which run different domains or virtual machines. The backup strategy may vary depending on your configuration. A simple approach would consist of the following steps (please do not use the following commands blindly as are potentially destructive if you have a different configuration):

1. Create the backup directory For the purpose of this guide we are going to backup under /sNow/backup/201611. Obviously, after doing the backup you need to save all the data generated there in a safe place which meets the security rules of your company.

   mkdir -p /sNow/backup/201611
   

2. Backup configuration of the sNow! nodes. Backup the installed package list and the /etc/ directory of each sNow node. We assume here we have only snow01.

   dpkg --get-selections | awk ' { print $1 } ' | xargs > /sNow/backup/201611/package-list.txt
   cd /etc
   tar -zcvf /sNow/backup/201611/etc.tar.gz *
   

3. Backup of the /sNow filesystem You will need to backup the /sNow filesystem contents. To do that:

   cd /sNow
   tar --exclude=backup/* -zcvf /sNow/backup/201611/sNow.tar.gz *
   

4. VM backup It’s time to backup the VMs. To do that you will create a snapshot and then dd it to a file. Obtaining a list of the working VMs (if you have VMs that are not powered on and you need to backup then please take it into consideration):

   snow list| egrep -v "Name|Domain-0"|gawk '{print $1}'
   

   Creating the snapshots:

   for i in `snow list| egrep -v "Name|Domain-0"|gawk '{print $1}'`; do
    lvcreate -s -L 1G -n $i-snap snow_vg/$i-disk
   done
   

   List the snapshots to backup:

   lvs | grep snap | awk ' { print $1 } '
   

   Launch the backup:

   for i in `lvs | grep snap | awk ' { print $1 } '`; do
    dd if=/dev/snow_vg/$i of=/sNow/backup/201611/$i.vm.img
   done
   

   Finally remove the LVM snapshots:

   for i in `lvs | grep snap | awk ' { print $1 } '`; do lvremove snow_vg/$i; done