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Backuping FreeBSD Jails instances to LEBs?
Hello,
I have a couple of colocation servers running FreeBSD and multiple Jails instances inside both of them. The machines are redundant using HAST and CARP, but I have been thinking about ways to backup them to remote machines in case of the current data center faces major network outages.
These are my current options:
a) getting bunch of LEBs and creating some scripts rsyncing Apache+PHP+PostgreSQL content from FreeBSD to OpenVZ containers
b) buying Kimsufi special edition dedicated server(s) with FreeBSD and rsyncing the whole Jails environment there
c) something else?
I'd be very interested in hearing your professional opinions on how this should be handled in a cost effective way.
Thanks, Crab
Comments
Are you using a jail framework?
If you refer to ezjail, no. That came across my mind when I originally set things up, but I simply went by the handbook (http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/jails-application.html). That might have a wiser move as apparently it makes this type of task pretty trivial. I wonder what's the process of getting existing Jails envs under ezjail or such.
How well FreeBSD/Jails is running under a KVM VPS? LEBs don't come with a lot of RAM so that makes the task pretty difficult. Running on a fast IO LEB from a provider like Ramnode would naturally make things easier.
I wouldn't want to spend a lot of time creating scripts getting things migrated from FreeBSD to Linux.
You can try warden or upgrade to 9.1.
FreeBSD runs very well under KVM.
You may try ezjail-clone.sh
Warden looks very nice, but I have never had FreeBSD installation with X
Thanks though, I'll keep it in mind for a future reference.
That seems to be something which would make it easy to migrate my jails to ezjail. Thanks for the tip!
Has anybody tried jails in a low memory (512MB) KVM VPS? I wonder how much RAM is left after minimal FBSD installation + zfs + necessities + jails.
@Crab
You don't need X, you can use the command line.
For some reason we can't get FreeBSD 64-bit versions to run on our KVM. George at Fusioned reported similar problems...
I almost opened a support ticket to you guys about that the other day
What kind of problems you have had? People are mostly complaining about poor disk I/O.
Nick_A, no idea, but its working for both providers.
I used FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-amd64-bootonly.iso
Needs a little tinkering tho
At RamNode?
@Nick_A
What are you using to install it? Does 32bit work?
Just loading it up like any ISO for a KVM VPS. 32-bit does work.
To my knowledge you can't use Virtio until after (once you apply the patch). @TheHackBox was fiddling around with it earlier on OpenITC's KVM.
Yes, virtio will only work after you install the virtio driver from either FreeBSD's ports or google search FreeBSD virtio.
I tried with IDE as well.
You can set me up with a KVM for freebsd testing purpose
yea, you can do that before too:
curl -O ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/9.0/FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-amd64-bootonly.iso
curl -O ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/mirror/FreeBSD/ports/amd64/packages-9-stable/emulators/virtio-kmod-0.234349.tbz
mkdir headless /mnt/freebsd
mount FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-amd64-bootonly.iso /mnt/freebsd
cp -R /mnt/freebsd/ .
cd freebsd
tar -xjf virtio-kmod-0.234349.tbz
cd ..
echo 'virtio_load="YES"' >> freebsd/boot/loader.conf
echo 'virtio_pci_load="YES"' >> freebsd/boot/loader.conf
echo 'virtio_blk_load="YES"' >> freebsd/boot/loader.conf
echo 'if_vtnet_load="YES"' >> freebsd/boot/loader.conf
echo 'virtio_balloon_load="YES"' >> freebsd/boot/loader.conf
mkisofs -v -b boot/cdboot -no-emul-boot -r -J -V "FREEBSD_INSTALL" \
-o VIRTIO-FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-amd64-bootonly.iso freebsd
Done!