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While you can use the LVM snapshot to create snapshots, you can also use it to back up your volumes. By using LVM snapshot, you reduce the size of the backup; only existing data is backed up instead of the entire volume. To back up a volume, you must create a snapshot of it. An LVM snapshot is the exact copy of a logical volume, which contains data in a frozen state. This prevents data corruption, because data cannot be manipulated during the volume creation process. Remember that the volumes created through a nova volume-create command exist in an LVM logical volume. You must also make sure that the operating system is not using the volume, and that all data has been flushed on the guest filesystems. This usually means that those filesystems have to be unmounted during the snapshot creation. They can be mounted again as soon as the logical volume snapshot has been created. Before you create the snapshot, you must have enough space to save it. As a precaution, you should have at least twice as much space as the potential snapshot size. If insufficient space is available, the snapshot might become corrupted. For this example, assume that a 100 GB volume named volume-00000001 was created for an instance while only 4 GB are used. This example uses these commands to back up only those 4 GB: lvm2 command. Directly manipulates the volumes. kpartx command. Discovers the partition table created inside the instance. tar command. Creates a minimum-sized backup. sha1sum command. Calculates the backup checksum to check its consistency. You can apply this process to volumes of any size. Use this command to list all volumes: # lvdisplay Create the snapshot; you can do this while the volume is attached to an instance: # lvcreate --size 10G --snapshot --name volume-00000001-snapshot /dev/cinder-volumes/volume-00000001 Use the --snapshot configuration option to tell LVM that you want a snapshot of an already existing volume. The command includes the size of the space reserved for the snapshot volume, the name of the snapshot, and the path of an already existing volume. Generally, this path is /dev/cinder-volumes/$volume_name. The size does not have to be the same as the volume of the snapshot. The size parameter defines the space that LVM reserves for the snapshot volume. As a precaution, the size should be the same as that of the original volume, even if the whole space is not currently used by the snapshot. Run the lvdisplay command again to verify the snapshot: --- Logical volume --- LV Name /dev/cinder-volumes/volume-00000001 VG Name cinder-volumes LV UUID gI8hta-p21U-IW2q-hRN1-nTzN-UC2G-dKbdKr LV Write Access read/write LV snapshot status source of /dev/cinder-volumes/volume-00000026-snap [active] LV Status available # open 1 LV Size 15,00 GiB Current LE 3840 Segments 1 Allocation inherit Read ahead sectors auto - currently set to 256 Block device 251:13 --- Logical volume --- LV Name /dev/cinder-volumes/volume-00000001-snap VG Name cinder-volumes LV UUID HlW3Ep-g5I8-KGQb-IRvi-IRYU-lIKe-wE9zYr LV Write Access read/write LV snapshot status active destination for /dev/cinder-volumes/volume-00000026 LV Status available # open 0 LV Size 15,00 GiB Current LE 3840 COW-table size 10,00 GiB COW-table LE 2560 Allocated to snapshot 0,00% Snapshot chunk size 4,00 KiB Segments 1 Allocation inherit Read ahead sectors auto - currently set to 256 Block device 251:14 To exploit the snapshot with the tar command, mount your partition on the Block Storage service server. The kpartx utility discovers and maps table partitions. You can use it to view partitions that are created inside the instance. Without using the partitions created inside instances, you cannot see its content and create efficient backups. # kpartx -av /dev/cinder-volumes/volume-00000001-snapshot On a Debian-based distribution, you can use the apt-get install kpartx command to install kpartx. If the tools successfully find and map the partition table, no errors are returned. To check the partition table map, run this command: $ ls /dev/mapper/nova* You can see the cinder--volumes-volume--00000001--snapshot1 partition. If you created more than one partition on that volume, you see several partitions; for example: cinder--volumes-volume--00000001--snapshot2, cinder--volumes-volume--00000001--snapshot3, and so on. Mount your partition: # mount /dev/mapper/cinder--volumes-volume--volume--00000001--snapshot1 /mnt If the partition mounts successfully, no errors are returned. You can directly access the data inside the instance. If a message prompts you for a partition or you cannot mount it, determine whether enough space was allocated for the snapshot or the kpartx command failed to discover the partition table. Allocate more space to the snapshot and try the process again. Create a backup of the volume: $ tar --exclude="lost+found" --exclude="some/data/to/exclude" -czf volume-00000001.tar.gz -C /mnt/ /backup/destination This command creates a tar.gz file that contains the data, and data only. This ensures that you do not waste space by backing up empty sectors. You should always have the checksum for your backup files. When you transfer the same file over the network, you can run a checksum calculation to ensure that your file was not corrupted during its transfer. The checksum is a unique ID for a file. If the checksums are different, the file is corrupted. Run this command to run a checksum for your file and save the result to a file: $ sha1sum volume-00000001.tar.gz > volume-00000001.checksum Use the sha1sum command carefully because the time it takes to complete the calculation is directly proportional to the size of the file. For files larger than around 4 to 6 GB, and depending on your CPU, the process might take a long time. Now that you have an efficient and consistent backup, use this command to clean up the file system: Unmount the volume: unmount /mnt Delete the partition table: kpartx -dv /dev/cinder-volumes/volume-00000001-snapshot Remove the snapshot: lvremove -f /dev/cinder-volumes/volume-00000001-snapshot Repeat these steps for all your volumes. Because more and more volumes might be allocated to your Block Storage service, you might want to automate your backups. The SCR_5005_V01_NUAC-OPENSTACK-EBS-volumes-backup.sh script assists you with this task. The script performs the operations from the previous example, but also provides a mail report and runs the backup based on the backups_retention_days setting. Launch this script from the server that runs the Block Storage service. This example shows a mail report: Backup Start Time - 07/10 at 01:00:01 Current retention - 7 days The backup volume is mounted. Proceed... Removing old backups... : /BACKUPS/EBS-VOL/volume-00000019/volume-00000019_28_09_2011.tar.gz /BACKUPS/EBS-VOL/volume-00000019 - 0 h 1 m and 21 seconds. Size - 3,5G The backup volume is mounted. Proceed... Removing old backups... : /BACKUPS/EBS-VOL/volume-0000001a/volume-0000001a_28_09_2011.tar.gz /BACKUPS/EBS-VOL/volume-0000001a - 0 h 4 m and 15 seconds. Size - 6,9G --------------------------------------- Total backups size - 267G - Used space : 35% Total execution time - 1 h 75 m and 35 seconds The script also enables you to SSH to your instances and run a mysqldump command into them. To make this work, enable the connection to the Compute project keys. If you do not want to run the mysqldump command, you can add enable_mysql_dump=0 to the script to turn off this functionality.