[Lxc-users] rootfs backup

[C Anthony Risinger]

On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 12:02 PM, Noah Campbell <noahcampbell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> With my limited knowledge of lxc, I would recommend looking at a filesystem that supports snapshots.

yes, in the past i've used btrfs for this (.32 kernel).  some will say
that it's not suitable for use (and in some situations it may not be),
but imo, it's stable enough for my uses; i've had a server running
since .32 was released (2 yrs?) hosting several btrfs-based containers
without any issue... and btrfs was only considered "ready for early
adopters" at that point.

using a couple of template subvolumes, i was able to snapshot them
into usable domains in < 1 second, and create backups just as fast,
while at the same time reusing blocks and saving enormous amounts of
disk space.

works like a treat :-) i plan on using it extensively very soon for an
updated KVM+LXC server using libvirt.

C Anthony

ps....depending on how... bold... you are, there are LZO compression
patches queued for .38:

http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-btrfs/msg07748.html

and some dedup work is basic but workable:

http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-btrfs/msg07819.html
http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-btrfs/msg07820.html

both will be very useful for containerized environments.