Changes

Dependencies: sendEmail package for emailing of statistics

== Changes ==

#!/bin/bash

# ezvzdump

# Copyright (C) 2008 Alex Lance (alla at cyber.com.au)

# Sponsored by Silverband Pty. Ltd.

# This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify

# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free

# Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any

# later version.

# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but

# WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or

# FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for

# more details: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt

# Instructions

# ------------

# This script rsyncs a VE to a specified local directory, suspends the running

# VE, rsyncs again, and then resumes the VE. This creates a stable snapshot of

# the VE directories with minimal downtime.

# Once the VE has been dumped out locally, it is rsynced to a remote host. When

# the rsync has completed, a tar archive is created on the remote host. The tar

# archive is compatible with the vzdump tar format, so the VE tar file may be

# later restored with the `vzdump --restore` command.

# By tarring the files together on the remote host, the burden of creating

# the tar archive is taken away from the hardware node, and given to the remote

# host / backup server. This ensures that minimal additional CPU/disk resources

# are used on the machine that is running the VE's.

# This script runs slow the first time you use it, but from then on it utilizes

# the local and remote stored snapshot directories so that the rsyncs happen

# expediently. The script does not wait for the remote tar process to complete,

# it simply kicks off the tar archive creation and then immediately continues.

# This script uses rsync and ssh and assumes that you already have ssh keys

# set up between your hosts. This script was written because vzdump takes too

# backups. This script also puts less strain on the hardware node by finishing

# backups more quickly, and making the remote host do the heavy lifting.

# This section contains variables that require user customisation.