VM's snapshots


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On 3/18/2023 at 6:42 PM, wacko37 said:

+1

Still struggling to understand why this is not already a feature? How is everyone dealing with backups of their VM's without this feature?

Client / server based backups.

 

If you install a proper backup software inside the VM, it can do valid backups without taking down the VM. I personally use UrBackup, there is a container for it in the app section of Unraid, but you can just as easily use the built in windows backup if you are using microsoft products, or acronis, or any number of proper backup softwares.

 

Doing it this way instead of trying to do a live image snapshot ensures you will have a valid backup instead of a crash consistent one. If you restore a snapshot that was taken of a running VM, you risk the snapshot not containing a valid backup, because there is no way for the VM client to know that it needs to commit changes from RAM to disk.

 

Snapshots of VM's are only a good backup if you are willing to properly shut down the VM before taking the snapshot, or have some other feature in the VM to allow a live snapshot to work 100% of the time. Much easier to not reinvent the wheel and use good backup software in the VM.

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On 3/20/2023 at 1:24 AM, JonathanM said:

Client / server based backups.

 

If you install a proper backup software inside the VM, it can do valid backups without taking down the VM. I personally use UrBackup, there is a container for it in the app section of Unraid, but you can just as easily use the built in windows backup if you are using microsoft products, or acronis, or any number of proper backup softwares.

 

Doing it this way instead of trying to do a live image snapshot ensures you will have a valid backup instead of a crash consistent one. If you restore a snapshot that was taken of a running VM, you risk the snapshot not containing a valid backup, because there is no way for the VM client to know that it needs to commit changes from RAM to disk.

 

Snapshots of VM's are only a good backup if you are willing to properly shut down the VM before taking the snapshot, or have some other feature in the VM to allow a live snapshot to work 100% of the time. Much easier to not reinvent the wheel and use good backup software in the VM.

 

Is there anything planned in the direction of VM-Snapshots like it's done in proxmox? This feature there is so simple and reliable... you just have to add a backup plan or you can do the snapshot manually with one click!- even when the VM is running. Restoring is super easy too... choose the snapshot you like and hit the restore button.

 

Please! 🥲

Edited by enJOyIT
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8 hours ago, enJOyIT said:

 

Is there anything planned in the direction of VM-Snapshots like it's done in proxmox? This feature there is so simple and reliable... you just have to add a backup plan or you can do the snapshot manually with one click!- even when the VM is running. Restoring is super easy too... choose the snapshot you like and hit the restore button.

 

Please! 🥲

Unraid does support internal snaps shots which I believe prox uses. 

 

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I found this comment in reddit.

 

"You can snapshot VMs as unraid provides them default by navigating to the storage device it exists on, and doing cp --reflink=always vdisk1.img vidks1_snapshot.img"

 

 

 

 

Regarding refllink:

 

 

"The reflink is typically meant for whole files but a partial file range can be also copied, though there are no ready-made tools for that.

cp --reflink=always source target"

 

https://btrfs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Reflink.html

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