Q&A: Virtual Machine Backups

More from the forums:

Q: I am trying to figure out a backup plan and I am trying to figure out what the options I have are. We use an iSCSI SAN that has snapshot ablility so I was hoping to be able to take a snapshot of the Lun with the Virtual Hard Drives on it and then mount the snapshot in windows to backup the Vdisk. When I try to do this windows loads the sanpshot but only displays a blank drive. If this is not possible any other ideas would be great.

A: You'll want to use direct (i.e. raw) storage when snapshotting Windows VS from your iSCSI storage. The reason is logical disks use a Linux logical volume manager, which Windows cannot read. Alternatively, you can mount a snapshotted disk group using Linux, and then you'll see the volumes. Please see this forum post for backup options.

The original thread is here.

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