[lxc-users] backup strategies for lxd + zfs

Fajar A. Nugraha list at fajar.net
Wed Mar 8 09:44:06 UTC 2017


On Wed, Mar 8, 2017 at 12:08 AM, Spike <spike at drba.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm on Ubuntu Xenial running LXD from PPA + a ZFS storage backend.
>
> I've been reading everything I could find on backup strategies, but I've
> not found anything "official" or that even looked like a best practice so I
> thought I'd ask the list.
>
>


> First thing first, I think everybody agrees that you need /var/lib/lxd
> with lxd's database + the containers' fs.
>

Yes, but they have different requirements.

An extreme case, if you have a fixed, never changing amount of containers,
you only need to backup /var/lib/lxd once. FWIW, I also put /var/lib/lxd on
zfs (I usually use the dataset name 'data/lib/lxd', with mountpoint set
manually to /var/lib/lxd)


> For the FS, given ZFS, it seems that a snapshot + send|receive should do,
> however I'm unclear if one can simply snap and move the entire pool or if
> there are reasons why images should be snap'ed individually and sent over.
>
>
Both might work. Depending on how well your send/receive mechanism handles
new/deleted/renamed dataset.

The other approach I found is entirely different and 100% lxd based in
> which case you run LXD on the backup host too, snap containers, and then
> publish an image from the snaps to the backup host.
>

Too much additional cpu and disk usage ...

Third, I found people using the image export command to generate tarballs
> which are then copied over to the backup host.
>

... and unnecessary additional complexity.

can anybody provide some recommendations from experience running lxc in a
> production environment with zfs?
>
>
I use sanoid + syncoid (https://github.com/jimsalterjrs/sanoid). Works
well, with the catch that (for syncoid's case) I need to manually specify
which datasets I want to backup.

-- 
Fajar
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