Main Reference Article: http://www.charleslabri.com/back-up-xenserver-6-to-network-share-with-fancy-scripting-and-lots-of-fun-and-no-downtime/

Backup: http://www.8layer8.com/?p=260

Restore: http://www.8layer8.com/?p=200

You can back up all the VM's, XenServer hosts, and metadata from a single XenServer host in a XenServer pool.

Consider this a disaster recovery backup. Use a file-by-file backup such as Ahsay for daily needs.

Here we use an NFS mount for backup storage.

XVA backups are compressed on the fly.

This is a no-downtime script set; it backs up the VM “live” by taking a snapshot, and then exporting that snapshot to a mount point on Dom0.

1. The local Dom0 on the XenServer runs cron
2. The cleanup.sh file runs and removes old data and emails regarding what happened previously
3. The audit.sh runs and outputs the info via e-mail to the backup admin
4. The meta-backup.sh runs and backs up Dom0 and the XenServer database and structure
5. The vm_backup.sh runs and backs up the VMs running on the host
   1. enters the correct directory
   2. sources the .lib and the .cfg files
   3. determines what is to be backed up from the vm_backup.cfg file
   4. calls for a backup (via live snapshot/export)
   5. outputs to a log

Choose one of your XenServers to be the backup server. This script runs in Dom0 on a XenServer.

Here we assume you have a shared NFS folder /backup/xenserver-backup/VA-Hosting-Pool on IP address 10.10.1.9 and a XenServer pool named VA-Hosting-Pool.

Mount the NFS share:

mkdir /mnt/backup

vi /etc/fstab

Append:

#
# Mount the backup share
10.10.1.9:/backup/xenserver-backup/VA-Hosting-Pool /mnt/backup nfs _netdev 0 0

Mount the share, check it's mounted and test a manual backup:

mount -a
mount
xe vm-export vm="<your-vm-name>" filename=/mnt/backup/"<your-vm-name>".xva

see also SSMTP

Modify ssmtp.conf as necessary:

vi /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf

root=adminuser@yourdomain.com
mailhub=mail.yourdomain.com:465
RewriteDomain=yourdomain.com
FromLineOverride=YES
UseTLS=YES
AuthUser=smtpuser
AuthPass=smtppass

mkdir -p /opt/backup && cd /opt/backup
wget https://www.dropbox.com/s/0fyijjlv30mc413/XenServerBackup.zip?dl=1 -O XenServerBackup.zip
unzip XenServerBackup.zip
rm -rf __MACOSX/
chmod +x *.sh
chmod +x dbtool
cp -a ./dbtool /sbin/dbtool

You might want to use IP addresses to control which network interfaces are used for the backups.

Change the names and filenames to the names you have for your XenServers according to the article:

vi audit.sh

vi cleanup.sh

vi meta-backup.sh

vi mailheader.txt

vi vm_backup.cfg

Run the cleanup script and check for an e-mail message:

./cleanup.sh

Run the audit script and check for an e-mail message:

./audit.sh

Then run the metadata backup script. This will take longer, so let it run.

./meta-backup.sh

Old but good list of XenServer backup options: http://sysadminnotebook.blogspot.com/2011/05/xenserver-backup-solutions.html

http://www.computerforums.org/forums/server-articles/how-setup-live-xenservers-backups-208663.html

• The CLEARDOWN.sh script reclaims disk space from deleted snapshots
• startvmbackup.sh is the script that will start the live backups of our XenServer VMs

mkdir /home/backup
mkdir /VM_Backup

# Use a command like this if you want to send backups to a CIFS share
#mount -t cifs "//192.168.0.20/VM_Backup" -o username=username,password=password /VM_Backup

cd /VM_Backup
wget http://www.andy-burton.co.uk/files/xenserver_backup/xenserver_backup.tar.gz
tar -xzf xenserver_backup.tar.gz
chmod 777 v*

vi /home/backup/startvmbackup.sh

#!/bin/bash
set -x

# Dismount then remount backup share to be sure it's mounted
umount -f /VM_Backup

#mount -t cifs "//192.168.0.20/VM_Backup" -o username=username,password=password /VM_Backup

/VM_Backup/CLEARDOWN.sh

/VM_Backup/vm_backup.sh

/VM_Backups/CLEARDOWN.sh

sleep 120

/VM_Backups/CLEARDOWN.sh

chmod 777 /home/backup/startvmbackup.sh

vi /VM_Backup/CLEARDOWN.sh

#!/bin/bash

coalesce-leaf -u $uuid
coalesce-leaf -u $uuid
coalesce-leaf -u $uuid

xe host-call-plugin host-uuid=$VM_XENUUID plugin=coalesce-leaf fn=leaf-coalesce args:vm_uuid=$uuid
xe host-call-plugin host-uuid=$VM_XENUUID plugin=coalesce-leaf fn=leaf-coalesce args:vm_uuid=$uuid
xe host-call-plugin host-uuid=$VM_XENUUID plugin=coalesce-leaf fn=leaf-coalesce args:vm_uuid=$uuid

chmod 777 /VM_Backup/CLEARDOWN.sh

Edit the vm_backup.cfg file:

vi /VM_Backup/vm_backup.cfg

Insert these two lines in the Settings section:

#
# Settings
#

VM_XENHOST=$(xe vm-list | grep 'Control domain on host' | awk -F ': ' '{ print $3 }')

VM_XENUUID=$(xe vm-list params uuid=$(xe vm-list | grep -B1 $VM_XENHOST | grep uuid | awk -F ': ' '{ print $2 }') | grep resident-on | awk -F ': ' '{ print $2 }')

Set log path:

log_path="/VM_Backup/"$VM_XENHOST"/"$date".log"

Set the backup destination:

backup_dir="/VM_Backup/"$VM_XENHOST"/"

Ensure only running VMs are backed up:

backup_vms="running" 

Edit the vm_backup.lib file:

vi /VM_Backup/vm_backup.lib

Search for this line and add below it in the same if/then stanza:

log_message "VM $uuid backup failed"

                                xe host-call-plugin host-uuid=$VM_XENUUID plugin=coalesce-leaf fn=leaf-coalesce args:vm_uuid=$uuid
                                sleep 10
                                xe host-call-plugin host-uuid=$VM_XENUUID plugin=coalesce-leaf fn=leaf-coalesce args:vm_uuid=$uuid
                                sleep 10
                                xe host-call-plugin host-uuid=$VM_XENUUID plugin=coalesce-leaf fn=leaf-coalesce args:vm_uuid=$uuid

Search for this line and add below it in the same if/then stanza:

log_message "VM $uuid backup succeeded"

                                xe host-call-plugin host-uuid=$VM_XENUUID plugin=coalesce-leaf fn=leaf-coalesce args:vm_uuid=$uuid
                                sleep 10
                                xe host-call-plugin host-uuid=$VM_XENUUID plugin=coalesce-leaf fn=leaf-coalesce args:vm_uuid=$uuid
                                sleep 10
                                xe host-call-plugin host-uuid=$VM_XENUUID plugin=coalesce-leaf fn=leaf-coalesce args:vm_uuid=$uuid