[vox-tech] Cloning LVM volume over network

[Alex Mandel]

I plan to turn off the running virtual machine for the time window it
takes to clone it. Already notified my users. There are all sorts of
other methods with lvm snapshots that I care not to deal with for this.

Thanks,
Alex

On 05/29/2012 02:33 PM, Jeff Newmiller wrote:
> What puzzles me is how you plan to recover changes made to the vm during the copy process, since one of the original stipulations was that the machines continue to run.
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> 
> Alex Mandel <tech_dev at wildintellect.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 05/29/2012 11:36 AM, Brian Lavender wrote:
>>> On Sun, May 27, 2012 at 09:16:24AM -0700, Wes Hardaker wrote:
>>>> Alex Mandel <tech_dev at wildintellect.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> I'm looking for the most efficient way to clone an LVM volume 50GB
>> from
>>>>> one physical machine to another. Both machines must stay up, so
>> that
>>>>> rules out clonezilla. I'd also like it to be more efficient that
>> dd, so
>>>>> more similar to partimage or partclone where it skips the empty
>> space
>>>>> and only copies the filled part.
>>>>>
>>>>> Anyone have examples that show how to do this?
>>>>
>>>> I'd typically use rsync...  Fast and efficient :-)
>>>
>>> Assuming the lvm volume is mounted on both sides and you tunnel rsync
>> over ssh. 
>>> If you are in an internal network, you could do it over rsh and avoid
>> the crypto
>>> overhead.
>>>
>>> cd /mnt/local
>>>
>>> Then use the the following from the rsync man page, clipped below. 
>>> rsync uses the -e option for ssh, but I don't quite have a machine to
>> test it.
>>>
>>>  To synchronize my samba source trees use the following: 
>>>
>>>                    rsync -Cavuzb . remote_machine:/mnt/local/
>>>
>>> It is clipped from where Tridgell talks abut syncing his samba shares
>> using
>>> a Makefile and samba source code for CVS commits.
>>>
>>> brian
>>>
>>
>> I think the tricky part here is that the lvm volume may contain
>> multiple
>> partitions (I think it does have a / and a swap since it's a virtual
>> machine disk), and I need the partition information, including the boot
>> flags.
>>
>> Yes it is local network, same rack, I even have a private subnet
>> between
>> the machines.
>>
>> This seems to be the foolproof way
>> http://www.alethe.com/brad/2008/04/move-an-lvm-based-virtual-machine-to-another-host/
>>
>> Was just hoping I could figure out how to do it faster, clonezilla
>> seems
>> fancier than just partclone though. I think I need something that dumps
>> the partition information too.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Alex