If the program works while within a VM, how does it work within the condition of a system that uses Logical Volumes and and a LVM? Thanks.
IFL and Virtual Drive Interface
IFL and Virtual Drive Interface
When I boot into the IFL environment, with its main menu options for Backup > Full > Select Drive Interface, I see two choices: Linux or Virtual Drive. These apparently lead me to selecting the Source Drive to backup from. However, it is not clear to me just how I could make use of the Virtual Drive option. I use VirtualBox and I have several VMs with different operating systems. How exactly could I make use of your excellent program in conjunction with them? I mean, is the idea here that I would be using TBU within a virtual machine to make a backup of its drives, or is it that I would be using TBU outside of the VM for another purpose?
If the program works while within a VM, how does it work within the condition of a system that uses Logical Volumes and and a LVM? Thanks.
If the program works while within a VM, how does it work within the condition of a system that uses Logical Volumes and and a LVM? Thanks.
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TeraByte Support(TP)
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Re: IFL and Virtual Drive Interface
userX wrote:
> When I boot into the IFL environment, with its main menu options for Backup > Full
> > Select Drive Interface, I see two choices: Linux or Virtual Drive. These
> apparently lead me to selecting the Source Drive to backup from. However, it is not
> clear to me just how I could make use of the Virtual Drive option. I use VirtualBox
> and I have several VMs with different operating systems. How exactly could I make use
> of your excellent program in conjunction with them? I mean, is the idea here that I
> would be using TBU within a virtual machine to make a backup of its drives, or is it
> that I would be using TBU outside of the VM for another purpose?
The Virtual Drive option can be used from the host system to image/restore/copy a virtual hard drive, just as you would a real hard drive. To do that, you would point IFL at virtual hard drive file, such as a VMDK file (VMWare), or a VHD file (VPC). Virtual Box uses VDI hard drive files by default, but can also use VMDK and VHD files. This subject is covered in the IFL manual, starting on page 30, where you'll find more details on it.
You can also run IFL within a VM. In this case, the drives would be seen as "real" hard drives within the VM, and you could save images to drives within the VM, or to an external drive (such as a USB drive), or you could mount a network share and save the image to that. Typically, imaging a virtual hard drive from the host system will be faster.
>
> If the program works while within a VM, how does it work within the condition of a
> system that uses Logical Volumes and and a LVM? Thanks.
IFL can image LVM partitions (the LVM physical volume), but it will treat them as an unrecognized file system, and all sectors will be backed up. This is the brute force method of dealing with them. It does work, but can create very large images.
IFL will recognize indivual LVM volumes once they are activated (from the boot disk, run 'start-lvm' to activate). Once activated, they will show up in IFL as drives that you can image/restore like any other drive. However, when restoring, the physical volume/volume group/LVM structure must already already be in place on the drive. So you couldn't just restore an LVM image to a new, blank hard drive, for example.
> When I boot into the IFL environment, with its main menu options for Backup > Full
> > Select Drive Interface, I see two choices: Linux or Virtual Drive. These
> apparently lead me to selecting the Source Drive to backup from. However, it is not
> clear to me just how I could make use of the Virtual Drive option. I use VirtualBox
> and I have several VMs with different operating systems. How exactly could I make use
> of your excellent program in conjunction with them? I mean, is the idea here that I
> would be using TBU within a virtual machine to make a backup of its drives, or is it
> that I would be using TBU outside of the VM for another purpose?
The Virtual Drive option can be used from the host system to image/restore/copy a virtual hard drive, just as you would a real hard drive. To do that, you would point IFL at virtual hard drive file, such as a VMDK file (VMWare), or a VHD file (VPC). Virtual Box uses VDI hard drive files by default, but can also use VMDK and VHD files. This subject is covered in the IFL manual, starting on page 30, where you'll find more details on it.
You can also run IFL within a VM. In this case, the drives would be seen as "real" hard drives within the VM, and you could save images to drives within the VM, or to an external drive (such as a USB drive), or you could mount a network share and save the image to that. Typically, imaging a virtual hard drive from the host system will be faster.
>
> If the program works while within a VM, how does it work within the condition of a
> system that uses Logical Volumes and and a LVM? Thanks.
IFL can image LVM partitions (the LVM physical volume), but it will treat them as an unrecognized file system, and all sectors will be backed up. This is the brute force method of dealing with them. It does work, but can create very large images.
IFL will recognize indivual LVM volumes once they are activated (from the boot disk, run 'start-lvm' to activate). Once activated, they will show up in IFL as drives that you can image/restore like any other drive. However, when restoring, the physical volume/volume group/LVM structure must already already be in place on the drive. So you couldn't just restore an LVM image to a new, blank hard drive, for example.