[OpenIndiana-discuss] vboxsvc and zvolrights

[Jim Klimov]

On 2013-10-17 23:35, Geoff Nordli wrote:
> I use the built in vbox initiator.
>
> Not the highest performing setup, but these are small business services
> and disk IO isn't the biggest issue we have.
>
> I am using it for automated backup system.  I virtualize their servers
> into vbox, pause the VM(s), zfs snapshot, send to a different pool and
> send another copy offsite.

In such case note that the recent versions (circa one year now) of the
script support creation of automatic ZFS snapshots of the backend
storage after VM stop and before VM start, and at least for file-based
VMs (including over NFS) and for local zvols it should be able to
detect the list of involved ZFS datasets, as well as you can provide
a list of other datasets you know as related (i.e. iSCSI LUN zvols).

I did not have a scenario exactly like yours, but it may be possible
(either out of the box or after minor scripting) to use the shutdown
action to pause and un-pause the VMs and have this action wrap the
creation of the snapshots. Certainly (right now) you can use the
"vbox.sh zfssnap" method between your own pause/unpause calls with
just one generic command to call from your automation scripts.

I am not sure if pause/unpause provide for very good backups, since
they would seem like a reset upon recovery (unlike savestate/restore,
but at the cost of some more downtime).

Feel free to ask for more features, I might get around to implementing
them one day... or send patches :)

//Jim