Storix Software SBAdmin Oracle VMServer for x86 Recovery Guide - Manual (Page 3)

Storix System Backup Administrator 3 Oracle VM Server for x86 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
Including domU Systems in dom0 Full System Backup
You may perform a full system backup of the Oracle VM Server (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 filesystems that store the domU image files. This will ensure the domU systems are in a
stable state at the time of the backup.
To include domU systems in a system backup, you must understand how the systems are configured and stored
on dom0. If the domU is stored within a file on dom0 then you must only assure that the filesystem and file are
not excluded from the backup. If the domU is stored in a raw partition or raw logical volume on dom0, then you
must ensure that the appropriate raw device type is included in the backup. The option to include raw partitions
and/or logical volumes is found in the backup profile. Note that the default is NOT to include raw data in a full
system backup.
Determining Hypervisor File Used by dom0 (multiboot file)
The SBAdmin process to create a system backup of dom0 requires knowing the Xen hypervisor file dom0 is
running under. You may also see the Xen hypervisor file referred to as the multiboot file. Under most
circumstances SBAdmin will be able to determine the booted hypervisor file. In the case that SBAdmin is
unable to determine which hypervisor was used at boot time, it will be required that the user manually specify
the file. Note that this file must also be updated if the hypervisor is changed with system updates.
To manually determine the hypervisor that was used to boot dom0, it will be necessary to know which GRUB
entry was chosen at boot time. You will need to determine the stanza found in the file /boot/grub/menu.lst that
was used to boot the system. Within the stanza there will be a line similar to the following which identifies the
Xen hypervisor file:
kernel /boot/xen-3.0-i386.gz
To specify the hypervisor to SBAdmin, create the file /storix/config/multibootfile (assuming /storix is your
Storix data directory). Within this file, specify the path to the Xen hypervisor. In this case it would be as
follows.
/boot/xen-3.0-i386.gz
You may now create a system backup.
Understanding Storage Repositories
An Oracle VM storage repository is a filesystem (typically ocfs2 or NFS) where resources used by the server
will be found. These resources are primarily guest virtual machines, virtual machine templates, and shared
virtual disks. Typically, the server will become part of a server pool and the resources would therefore be
available to all servers in the server pool. Note that server pools are managed by the Oracle VM Manager, but
the repository storage configuration is managed by the individual server.
In most cases, the SBAdmin system recovery process will migrate configurations related to storage and storage
devices. However, Oracle VM storage repositories are the exception in that steps will need to be performed by
the user in order for the repositories to become available following a recovery. Those steps will be detailed
later, but at the time of the backup you should understand and retain how the repositories are configured on the
server. Most important, you will want to know which repository UUID is the root storage repository.