The intent of this article is to describe how you can achieve common backup and restore use cases with IBM Fusion 2.8 protecting OpenShift Virtualization virtual machines. This information can be helpful when discussing OpenShift Virtualization and backup and restore with clients.
Note: The IBM Fusion team is actively working on providing how-to documentation for backup and restore of virtual machines in the Knowledge Center.
Q: Does Fusion Backup & Restore provide protection of OpenShift Virtualization virtual machines?
A: Yes. IBM Fusion offers virtual machine protection through the Fusion Backup & Recovery service:
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In-place backup of virtual machine and OpenShift resources
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Option to copy backup to object storage
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Integrated backup policy management
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Incremental backup of virtual machine
Q: What is the best practice for managing virtual machines with Fusion Backup & Restore
A: IBM Fusion manages backup and recovery of applications in the context of a namespace; virtual machine protection also operates within the context of a namespace. Backup and restoration of virtual machines are achieved by backing up and restoring the namespaces which contain the virtual machine(s). IBM Fusion recommends creating a namespace for each virtual machine or set of virtual machines that represent an individual application; this will help users more easily achieve use cases listed in this FAQ.
Q: Can I recover a virtual machine(s) to an alternate cluster?
A: You can recover a virtual machine(s) to same or alternate cluster using IBM Fusion interfaces.
Q: How to I test that a vm backup is valid?
A: You can recover all virtual machines in a namespace to an alternate namespace and boot virtual machine to test if it is operational. Refer to namespace recommendation above to allow greater granularity in virtual machine backup and recovery
Q: How can I recover a subset of virtual machines in a namespace if I have more then one virtual machine in a namespace?
A: You can recover all of the virtual machines in a namespace to an alternate namespace and then delete the virtual machines that are not required. Refer to namespace recommendation above to allow greater granularity in virtual machine backup and recovery
Q: Can I restore selected files from a virtual machine?
A: You can recover all virtual machines in namespace to an alternate namespace and copy files out of the desired target virtual machine via command-line. Refer to namespace recommendation above to allow greater granularity in virtual machine backup and recovery
Q: How do I manage the backup of a large number of virtual machines?
A: You can manage assignment of backup policy to a large number of virtual machines by directly working with the Fusion data protection custom resources, specifically the resources used to create backup policy and backup policy assignments. Refer to namespace recommendation above to allow greater granularity in virtual machine backup and recovery
Q: How is data consistency achieved when protecting a virtual machine?
A: You can use the default QEMU/libvirt tools provided with OpenShift virtualization to provide file system consistency when a Fusion backup (snapshot) is requested. You can also customize application consistency through the QEMU/libvirt tools. For more information on data consistency refer to the article OpenShift Virtualization - creating consistent backups using IBM Fusion.
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