After more than a year of temporarily parting with XCP-ng to switch to Proxmox, I have just returned to the Xen virtualization platform to continue researching and messing around. I like the friendly, intuitive interface of Xen Orchestra for managing virtual machines of XCP-ng. It’s simple, much easier to use than Proxmox’s interface. With Xen Orchestra, snapshots can be taken easily and managed through a web-based interface, making it convenient to backup and restore virtual machines without having to log in to the command line. Additionally, the backup data can be stored on external storage devices or on the cloud, providing an extra layer of protection and making it easier to recover in case of any issues.
I’m installing XCP-ng on 3 Lenovo M600s (Pentium J3710 CPU – 8GB RAM – 256 GB SSD), planning to learn more about cluster features, migrations, etc. The main network services are still running on Proxmox , installed on my Dell 7040 Micro computer (i5-6500T CPU – 32GB RAM – 1 TB NVME).
This article will show you how to clone (clone), create pixels (snapshop) and backup (backup) virtual machines. All are manipulated on the Web UI interface of Xen Orchestra Community Edition.
Table of contents
1. Clone virtual machine
The virtual machine needs to be turned off before performing the clone operation. Access the virtual machine to be cloned, select through the Advanced tab, then click the Clone button.
Wait a few minutes for the system to perform the necessary operations. You will then see the new virtual machine appear in the list. In the image below, I copied the Ubuntu Focal Fossa 20.04 virtual machine to add 2 new virtual machines and renamed it Ubuntu 1, 2, 3.
2. Create Virtual Machine Snapshot
A snapshot is an instant copy of a running virtual machine, stored on the same physical hard drive. It is useful when you need to test new software installations and configurations on virtual machines, and if you encounter an error, you can quickly restore to the previous status.
Access the Snapshots tab and click the New snapshot button to create a new copy. You can perform Snapshot creation while the virtual machine is running.
We can create a new virtual machine from the newly created snapshot by clicking the copy icon (Create a VM from this snapshot).
Choose Full copy or Fast clone depending on your needs (see details Full copy vs Fast clone). If you are not limited to the hard drive, you should choose Full copy. Then click OK to confirm copying the virtual machine based on the existing snapshot.
Note: Snapshot is not a virtual machine backup solution. Snapshot only stores the information of the virtual drive, not the data. So if the virtual drive fails, you won’t be able to recover the snapshot.
3. Backup virtual machine
To back up the virtual machine in case of unexpected problems, access the Backup item in the left menu, select the New button.
Select Backup VMs to confirm creating a backup for the virtual machine
Enter the required parameters
- Name: the name of the Backup item being created
- Backup Type: select Backup (back up the entire virtual machine). See details the purpose of each type of Backup here.
- Backup: choose where to save the backup. Click the Remotes settings button to create a new repository
- Settings: can leave defaults
- VMs to backup: select the virtual machine to backup
- Schedules: create backup schedules by day/week/month, etc.
You can create storage for virtual machines using NFS, Samba, Local, or S3 protocols. I choose S3, connect to Object Storage Server created by Minio and see good connection.
After creating a new Backup item, you will see a list of tasks appear in the Overview section. Click the Play arrow button next to the word Enable to activate the backup job immediately.
Click OK to confirm.
The time it takes to back up the virtual machine will depend on the amount of hard drive and the connection to the backup folder. Once completed, in the Restore section, information about the backup has just been created.
And this is the folder containing the backup file of the virtual machine stored on the Minio server.
Today’s tutorial is over.
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