A bare metal backup of a Xen virtual machine is captured in a manner supported by the guest operating system on the virtual machine. For example, on a Windows Server 2008 virtual machine, a hot bare metal backup can be scheduled and performed as described in the Windows Bare Metal Protection.
Restoring a bare metal image to a virtual machine requires specific steps to be taken to access the bare metal menu on the bare metal boot CD. These same steps would be taken to access the bare metal menu to perform a cold bare metal of a virtual machine.
The protection software creates a fully virtualized mock virtual machine to be used to communicate with the system to backup and restore a bare metal image from or to the appropriate location.
Note: This requires that the server CPU supports a fully virtualized environment and that VT/AMD-V is enabled in BIOS.
The virtual machine that is going to be backed up or recovered must be shutdown during the bare metal process.
To access the bare metal menu from a bare metal boot CD, perform the following steps:
| 1 | Know the exact name of the virtual machine to be backed up or recovered. The existing virtual machine names can be found using the virtual machine management GUI or executing this command from the command line: |
xm list
| 2 | Insert a bare metal boot CD in the host system’s CD drive. The bare metal boot CD should have been created for the specific guest virtual machine(s) following the instructions provided in the Bare Metal section. |
| 3 | From a command line on the host system, run this command: |
/usr/bp/bin/start_bare_metal <VMName><Device>
Where <VMName> is the name of the guest virtual machine to be backed up or recovered and <Device> is the name of the device in which the bare metal boot CD is inserted. For example:
/usr/bp/bin/start_bare_metal sles10 /dev/cdrom
Note: Run mount at a command prompt as root or root equivalent user to verify the device name of the cdrom.
When the command runs, a mock virtual machine is created and will be used to backup or restore images of the actual virtual machine to be protected or recovered. The following text displays on the screen:
#########################################################
CREATING PLACE HOLDER FULLY VIRTUALIZED VM FOR BARE METAL
#########################################################
Checking Processor(s) ...:
[ Supports Full Virtualization. ]
Checking Kernel ...:
[ Running XEN Kernel:2.6.16.46-0.12-XEN ]
Checking status of XENd ...
[ XENd running (pid 4177 4180) ]
Configuration file for the VM ...
/etc/XEN/vm/sles10
Creating Profile ...
Using config file "/usr/bp/mock_conf".
VM: unitrends_Bare Metal created.
The new virtual machine is now running and the bare metal menu displays. A bare metal image backup or recovery can be performed following the steps detailed in the applicable bare metal section for the VMs operating system. To find the desired procedure, see Bare metal procedures by client operating system.