Storix Software SBAdmin Citrix XenServer Recovery Guide - Manual (Page 2)

Storix System Backup Administrator 2 Citrix XenServer Recovery Guide
Copyright © 2014 Storix, Inc.
Storix is a registered trademark of Storix, Inc in the USA. SBAdmin is a trademark of Storix, Inc in the USA and other countries
Citrix XenServer Recovery Guide
The purpose of this document is to provide the steps necessary to perform system recovery when using Citrix
XenServer and to define the aspects of system recovery that are and are not supported. This guide does not
include all the features and options available with SBAdmin, but is intended to be used as an addendum to the
SBAdmin User Guide and the SBAdmin Linux System Recovery Guide .
SBAdmin provides support for Citrix XenServer versions 5.6 and 6.0.
System Backup and Restore of Citrix XenServer (dom0)
Citrix XenServer is based on Xen virtualization technology. Therefore, you will see the server referred to as
dom0 in this and other documents. The virtualized guest machines that run on the server are referred to as
domU systems.
Performing a system backup of the Citrix XenServer(dom0) is done much in the same manner as any other
Linux system. Refer to the
SBAdmin User Guide for additional details. However, the following considerations
deserve mention because they are specific to Citrix XenServer dom0 systems:
Including domU Systems in dom0 Full System Backup
You may perform a full system backup of the Citrix XenServer (dom0) that will include all virtualized (domU)
systems. However, it is good practice to either shutdown the domU systems or use the SBAdmin snapshot
backup feature on the logical volumes that store the domU images. This will ensure the domU systems are
in a stable state at the time of the backup.
To include the domU systems in a system backup, it is necessary to understand how the domU systems are
stored on dom0. When the domU is created, a logical volume will be created on the dom0. While the domU
is running this logical volume will be available to the dom0. However, the dom0 never mounts any file
systems for the domU. To include the data for the domU it is necessary to ensure that raw logical volumes
are included in the backup. This option is configured in the profile, note the option to include raw logical
volumes is NOT configured by default.
To include domU systems that are not running at the time of the backup, it may be necessary to activate
the logical volumes that contain domU data. To determine the logical volume on the dom0 associated with
the data for the domU. Use the “xe vm-disk-list” command. The output will be similar to the following.
# xe vm-disk-list
Disk 0 VDI:
uuid ( RO) : 477479e2-e5b5-4e3e-bf99-ad82e5263c67
name-label ( RW): Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (64-bit) (experimental) (1) 0
sr-name-label ( RO): Local storage
virtual-size ( RO): 8589934592