How to back up a running virtual machine in XenServer

This article introduces how to back up running virtual machines in XenServer, and can run the VM backup process step by step. In addition, there is a shell script that can back up all VMs or specified VMs. We It can also be scheduled through crontab.

Method 1: Manually Back Up a Running Virtual Machine

The following steps can also be performed through XenCenter, but Linux users prefer to use Command Line.

1. Find VMS UUID

Use the following command to get the UUID list of all vms and other details. This UUID will be used in the next step

# xe vm-list is-control-domain=false is-a-snapshot=false

Output

uuid ( RO)           : 8ac95696-94f3-83c1-bc89-8bb2603f832b
     name-label ( RW): test-vm
    power-state ( RO): running

According to the above output test, the vm uuid is "8ac95696-94f3-83c1-bc89-8bb2603f832b". You may be otherwise.

2. Create VMS snapshot

Now use the following command to create a VM snapshot using the UUID found in the above step. Make sure to use the correct UUID.

# xe vm-snapshot uuid=8ac95696-94f3-83c1-bc89-8bb2603f832b new-name-label=testvmsnapshot

The above command will retrieve the uuid of the snapshot, use that uuid to convert the snapshot to a vm, so we can export it to a file using the command below.

# xe template-param-set is-a-template=false ha-always-run=false uuid=b15c0531-88a5-98a4-e484-01bc89131561

3. Export the snapshot to a file

Now we can export the created snapshot to a .xva file, which can be easily restored from the command line or Xencenter.

# xe vm-export vm=b15c0531-88a5-98a4-e484-01bc89131561 filename=vm-backup.xva

4. Destroy the snapshot

Finally, because we have backed up to an XVA file, we can destroy the created snapshot from XenServer.

# xe vm-uninstall uuid=b15c0531-88a5-98a4-e484-01bc89131561 force=true

Method 2: Use script backup to run vms

In order to backup all virtual machines running on XenServer, we can also use the following shell script. This script mounts a remote file system exported via NFS. This script works great for this example, but may not work for you. So using this script does not guarantee your viability.

#!/bin/bash
#
# Written By: Mr Rahul Kumar
# Created date: Jun 14, 2014
# Last Updated: Mar 08, 2017
# Version: 1.2.1
# Visit: https://tecadmin.net/backup-running-virtual-machine-in-xenserver/
#

DATE=`date +%d%b%Y`
XSNAME=`echo $HOSTNAME`
UUIDFILE=/tmp/xen-uuids.txt
NFS_SERVER_IP="192.168.10.100"
MOUNTPOINT=/xenmnt
FILE_LOCATION_ON_NFS="/backup/citrix/vms"

### Create mount point

mkdir -p ${MOUNTPOINT}

### Mounting remote nfs share backup drive

[ ! -d ${MOUNTPOINT} ]  && echo "No mount point found, kindly check"; exit 0
mount -F nfs ${NFS_SERVER_IP}:${FILE_LOCATION_ON_NFS} ${MOUNTPOINT}

BACKUPPATH=${MOUNTPOINT}/${XSNAME}/${DATE}
mkdir -p ${BACKUPPATH}
[ ! -d ${BACKUPPATH} ]  && echo "No backup directory found"; exit 0


# Fetching list UUIDs of all VMs running on XenServer
xe vm-list is-control-domain=false is-a-snapshot=false | grep uuid | cut -d":" -f2 > ${UUIDFILE}

[ ! -f ${UUIDFILE} ] && echo "No UUID list file found"; exit 0

while read VMUUID
do
    VMNAME=`xe vm-list uuid=$VMUUID | grep name-label | cut -d":" -f2 | sed 's/^ *//g'`

    SNAPUUID=`xe vm-snapshot uuid=$VMUUID new-name-label="SNAPSHOT-$VMUUID-$DATE"`

    xe template-param-set is-a-template=false ha-always-run=false uuid=${SNAPUUID}

    xe vm-export vm=${SNAPUUID} filename="$BACKUPPATH/$VMNAME-$DATE.xva"

    xe vm-uninstall uuid=${SNAPUUID} force=true

done < ${UUIDFILE}

umount ${MOUNTPOINT}

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