I recently had to temporarily move my VM images out of the machine they run on because of the upgrades the machine needed to go through. I love how seamless & childlike the entire process of backing up and restoration is. Here, I am mostly documenting the process for my own future reference.
The machine I run my VM on went through a complete wipe down, so steps outlined in this post covers the bare minimum details needed for backup restoration. Finer details may vary from scenario to scenario.
Step 1 - Backup/Copy VM images
Find out the location of the VM images
virsh domblklist $VM_NAMEAnd, then copy the VM images using scp or other means. Also note the permissions you have set for these images using ls -l
Step 2 - Copy the config for VM
Find out the location of the VM images:
virsh dumpxml $VM_NAME > $VM_CONFIG.xmlAnd, then copy the VM images and config using scp or other means to safer locations.
Step 3 - Restore from backup
When the time comes for restoring the VM backup, simply copy back the images.
scp $VM_IMAGES $DEST_HOST:$PATH_TO_VM_IMAGES
scp $VM_CONFIG.xml $DEST_HOST:$PATH_TO_VM_CONFIGInitialize VM config from backup config.
virsh define --file $VM_CONFIG.xmlStep 4 - Correct the permissions
Make sure the permissions are similar to what was noted in Step - 1. For instance for default setup conditions it should be <USER>:libvirt for the image files.
Step 5 - Start the vm
virsh start $VM_NAMEThat’s it. Just like that we can move our vm images around without any problems.