General

When backing up resources in OpenStack, it's important to understand the difference between two primary methods:

1. VM Images (Glance): These capture the entire virtual machine, including the operating system, applications, and configuration. VM images are useful for cloning VMs, creating templates, or disaster recovery scenarios. They're managed through the Glance service.
2. Volume Backups (Cinder): These are point-in-time copies of block storage volumes. Volume backups preserve the data within a volume and can be used to restore the volume to the exact state it was in when backed up. They're ideal for data recovery and are managed through the Cinder service.

Choose the appropriate method based on your recovery needs: volume backups for data recovery, VM images for full system recovery or replication.

VM Images Backup

List available image

To list all available images:

openstack image list

Creating VM Images Snapshots

The following command creates the image SERVER by taking a snapshot of a running server.

openstack server image create --name IMAGE_NAME SERVER

Where:

• --name IMAGE_NAME: The name for the new image snapshot
• SERVER: The name of your server (as given by openstack server list).

Volume Backups

List available backups

To list all available backups in your cloud, you can use the following command:

openstack volume backup list

Additionally, you can filter the results with additional options to list backups for a specific volume:

 openstack volume backup list --volume VOLUME_ID

Creating Backups

To create a backup of a volume:

openstack volume backup create [--incremental] [--force] [--name NAME] VOLUME

Where:

• --incremental: Create an incremental backup (requires a previous full backup)
• --force: Create a backup even if the volume is attached
• --name NAME: Specify a name for the backup
• VOLUME: The ID or name of the volume to back up