Backup VM Images without hassle

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_NAME

And, 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.xml

And, 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_CONFIG

Initialize VM config from backup config.

virsh define --file $VM_CONFIG.xml

Step 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_NAME

That's it. Just like that we can move our vm images around without any problems.