[lxc-users] What is right way to backup and restore linux containers?

[Bostjan Skufca]

"man tar"

https://www.google.si/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=tar%20preserve%20everything

I would suggest -p and --numeric-owner and maybe --acl and --xattrs, but,
as I said before, I generally use rsync.

b.


On 4 December 2015 at 18:20, Saint Michael <venefax at gmail.com> wrote:

> What would it be the right tar parameters to compress and decompress all
> the rootfs, including devices and special files?
>
> On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 11:58 AM, Bostjan Skufca <bostjan at a2o.si> wrote:
>
>> Depends if you need consistent copy and how much downtime you can
>> tolerate.
>>
>> If inconsistent copy is enough, then you can run rsync over storage of
>> running container (on host, not in container) and be done with it.
>>
>> Rsync:
>> I find rsync useful and fast, providing that:
>> - whole container filesystem metadata fits into memory
>> - not too much data changes between subsequent rsync runs
>>
>> So, my simplified procedure is:
>> 1: rsync #1 - does most of the work, takes time, but can be run on
>> running container
>> 2: rsync #2 - to see how much files have changed since initial run (gives
>> good estimate of upcoming downtime)
>> 3: lxc-stop -n container (on host 1)
>> 4: rsync #3
>> 5: lxc-start -n container (on host 2)
>>
>> This procedure gives me about 10 seconds of downtime for containers with
>> small filesystems (up to 50GB).
>>
>> Block device migration:
>> Rsync is fast if it operates on not-too-many-files. If you are getting
>> long rsync runs because of amount of small files, then you might be better
>> off migrating whole block device. You can go about it with LVM or btrfs
>> snapshots too. I do not usually use this.
>>
>>
>> LXC vs LXD:
>> LXC in generally single-host-centred, so you have to do things manually.
>> LXD on the other hand supports operations on multiple hosts, but others
>> are more qualified to summarize what is currently possible (creating LXD
>> host associations between on-premises and cloud-provider hosts etc.)
>>
>> b.
>>
>>
>>
>> On 4 December 2015 at 17:32, Saint Michael <venefax at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I was going t ask the same question.
>>> It  is a very important one. I am moving containers via rsync, but it
>>> takes tooo long.
>>>
>>> On Fri, Dec 4, 2015 at 11:03 AM, Eax Melanhovich <afiskon at devzen.ru>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hello.
>>>>
>>>> Lets say I have some container. I would like to run something like:
>>>>
>>>> lxc-backup -n test-container my-backup.tgz
>>>>
>>>> Then move backup somewhere (say, to Amazon S3). Then say I would like
>>>> to restore my container or create its copy on different machine. So I
>>>> need something like:
>>>>
>>>> lxc-restore -n copy-of-container my-backup.tgz
>>>>
>>>> I discovered lxc-snapshot, but it doesn't do exactly what I need.
>>>>
>>>> So what is the right way of backuping and restoring linux containers?
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Best regards,
>>>> Eax Melanhovich
>>>> http://eax.me/
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> lxc-users mailing list
>>>> lxc-users at lists.linuxcontainers.org
>>>> http://lists.linuxcontainers.org/listinfo/lxc-users
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
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>
>
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