Citrix XenServer: VM Protection and Recovery Quick Start Guide www.citrix.com
Contents What is XenServer VM Protection and Recovery?... 3 Creating a VM Protection Policy... 3 Page 2
What is XenServer VM Protection and Recovery? XenServer's VM Protection and Recovery (VMPR) feature provides a backup and restore utility for your critical service VMs. Regular scheduled snapshots are taken automatically and can be used to restore individual VMs. VMPR works by having pool-wide VM protection policies that define snapshot schedules for selected VMs in the pool. When a policy is enabled, snapshots are taken of the specified VMs at the scheduled time each hour, day or week. If configured, these snapshots can also be archived automatically to a remote CIFS or NFS share, providing an additional level of security. Several VMPR policies may be enabled in a pool, covering different VMs and with different schedules. A VM can be assigned to only one policy at a time. Note: The VMPR feature is available in Citrix XenServer 6.0 Advanced Edition or higher. To learn more about the features available in different XenServer editions, visit: www.citrix.com/xenserver/editions. Creating a VM Protection Policy Before starting this procedure, make sure the pool contains a storage repository (either a CIFS ISO library or NFS ISO share) where want to store the snapshot archives. You will need to reference the path to this SR to archive the snapshots and, for CIFS, the credentials. Note: If the pool does not have a CIFS or NFS ISO storage repository, click the New SR button. Page 3
1. To open the New VM Protection Policy wizard: on the Pool menu, click VM Protection Policies to open the VM Protection Policies dialog box. 2. Click New to start the wizard. 3. Enter a name for the policy. Page 4
4. Select the VMs you want to protect with the policy. Note: A VM can be assigned to only one policy at a time, so if you assign it to the new policy, you are prompted to remove it from its current policy. 5. Select the type of snapshot you want to use for the scheduled snapshots: Disk-only snapshots store the VM's disks (storage) and metadata. They are crash-consistent and can be performed on all VM types, including Linux VMs. Disk and memory snapshots save the VM's disks (storage), metadata, and its current memory state (RAM). Note that this type of snapshot can be very large. 6. Create a schedule for the snapshots and specify the maximum number of snapshots you want XenServer to store. Page 5
7. Configure when and where you want snapshots to be archived, and click Test. Note: The archive and snapshot schedules do not need to match. However, you cannot define an archive schedule that is more frequent than the snapshot schedule. 8. Enter your email address to receive emails when snapshots are created, archived, or if these operations fail. 9. Select the Run the new VM protection job when I click Finish check box, and click Finish. Page 6
10. After the policy appears in the policies list box, click Close to exit the dialog. About Citrix Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS) is the leading provider of virtualization, networking and software as a service technologies for more than 230,000 organizations worldwide. Its Citrix Delivery Center, Citrix Cloud Center (C3) and Citrix Online Services product families radically simplify computing for millions of users, delivering applications as an on-demand service to any user, in any location on any device. Citrix customers include the world s largest Internet companies, 99 percent of Fortune Global 500 enterprises, and hundreds of thousands of small businesses and prosumers worldwide. Citrix partners with over 10,000 companies worldwide in more than 100 countries. Founded in 1989, annual revenue in 2010 was $1.87 billion. 2011 Citrix Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Citrix, Access Gateway, Branch Repeater, Citrix Repeater, HDX, XenServer, XenCenter, XenApp, XenDesktop and Citrix Delivery Center are trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners. Page 7