Question : Citrix XenServer Exports and Snapshots

What are our options for exporting a VM from Citrix Xenserver 5.5 and also to take snapshots of virtual machines?  More specifically we know we can export a VM to a SMB share and export to a locally attached USB drive, but how can we..

- Make the transfer quicker?  An export of a 200GB box takes an incredible amount of time.  Would exporting to the local disk instead of a USB drive or SMB share via the Linux box improve performance significantly which then we could start back up the VM to reduce downtime and export that file to another location?

- Take snapshots on the fly, I know there are "snapshots" in Xenserver, but I've never understood them fully in depth.

- Automate a XenServer export weekly or monthly via the command line?  I'm thinking a cron job of some sort which is like the following

1. Shutdown command to the VM
2. Export of the VM
3. Startup the VM

I know it's possible and can figure out the commands, but is it feasible and does anyone have it in production where we can count on the VMs to come back up after they go down?


I understand that some of these features may not be in the product at this time or in the future, but there has to be some kind of solution besides a software based backup like Retrospect or Acronis image that doesn't consume so much time.  I am not thinking of this as a single-backup solution, but rather in addition to a software backup that would run daily.

Thanks in advance and I look forward to your replies.

Answer : Citrix XenServer Exports and Snapshots

Bits are bits, you can only make the transfer quicker by having both a bigger pipe to/from the storage, and a faster storage array.  

Snapshots are on the fly, you can even schedule them.  Then you can perform a backup on the snapshot with the VM still running.  Again, BEWARE of performance degradation on your storage array.

You can absolutely automate the shutdown, export and recovery.  You can count on the VMs to come back up as long as your scripting is good and well tested.

Pretty much everything you want is already in the 5.6 release of XenServer.  Also check out StorageLink, which comes with XS Enterprise, and further enhances these functions.