Backups

Backups

The backup command is used to backup the current installation. This guide provides a brief overview of the command and its usage, along with several examples to get you started.

The basic syntax of the backup command is as follows:

genesis backup -d /path/to/backup/directory

Run the above command to backup the current installation to the specified directory. The command will create a subdirectory for each domain and copy its disks to the specified directory. The backup will repeat every 24 hours by default.

To configure period of backup, run the following command:

genesis backup -d /path/to/backup/directory -p 1h

The above command will backup the current installation to the specified directory every hour.

There is an option to do a backup once and exit:

genesis backup -d /path/to/backup/directory -oneshot

The above command will backup the current installation to the specified directory once and exit.

Basic Backup

Run backup periodically of all libvirt domains and store it in the current directory:

genesis backup

Backup Specific Domain

Run backup periodically of a specific libvirt domain and store it in the current directory:

genesis backup -n domain-name

Custom Periodic Backup

Run backup periodically of all libvirt domains and store it in the current directory:

genesis backup -p 1h

Available periods are: 1m, 5m, 15m, 30m, 1h, 3h, 6h, 12h, 1d, 3d, 7d

OneShot Backup

Run backup of all libvirt domains and store it in the current directory:

genesis backup -oneshot

This command will backup the current installation to the specified directory once and exit.

Compressed Backup

Run backup of all libvirt domains and store a compressed archive of the backup in the current directory:

genesis backup --compress

Encrypted Backup

Run backup of all libvirt domains and store an encrypted archive of the backup in the current directory:

NOTE: It works only with --compress flag

You need to set the environment variables GEN_DEV_BACKUP_KEY and GEN_DEV_BACKUP_IV to encrypt the backup. The key and IV must be greater or equal to 6 bytes and less or equal to 16 bytes.

export GEN_DEV_BACKUP_KEY=secret_key
export GEN_DEV_BACKUP_IV=secret_iv

genesis backup --compress --encrypt

For decryption, use the genesis backup-decrypt command.

genesis backup-decrypt backup.tar.gz.encrypted

Restore Backup

Let's consider a couple of scenarios to restore a particular machine from the backup. The backup can be as an entcrypted archive, archive or a directory. So the first step is to convert the backup to a directory:

Optional decryption of the backup

genesis backup-decrypt backup.tar.gz.encrypted

Optional decompression of the backup

tar -xzf backup.tar.gz

The backup directory can consist several subdirectories for each domain. Let's consider the following example:

.
├── a4cb5e6e-domain-foo
│   └── domain.xml
│   └── f5e1a096-1093-4d80-a21b-d453281360d5_a4cb5e6e-1ef0-450b-b28c-9638fe6e7eb9.qcow2
├── 444b5183-domain-bar
│   └── domain.xml
│   └── 005ff0d3-3945-46d0-8704-27c645dfe3ab_444b5183-a049-4415-86c2-c3c8262c1403.qcow2

• domain.xml is the domain configuration file
• *.qcow2 is the disk image

The most frequent use case is to restore a specific domain from the backup. Let's consider we already have a running domain foo but with corrupted disk and want to restore it from the backup. We can use the following commands:

# Shut down the domain
virsh shutdown foo

# Determine current disk path
sudo virsh domblklist foo

# Replace the disk
cp backup/a4cb5e6e-domain-foo/f5e1a096-1093-4d80-a21b-d453281360d5_a4cb5e6e-1ef0-450b-b28c-9638fe6e7eb9.qcow2 /var/lib/libvirt/images/foo.qcow2

# Start the domain
virsh start foo