Using Mondorescue And Virtualbox To Move Physical Servers To Virtual Systems
By: Alex Trent
Expert Author
2010-05-05
While googling for the best method of p2v (physical to virtual) transitioning for Linux based systems, an extensive revealed this. While it is quite a read, we only need to do a few steps to get mondorescue working and backup our system. First, we'll need to get a few dependency packages for mondorescue.
This guide covers moving a Debian 4.0 systems from physical to virtual hardware. There were a few things that must be done to get it working, that are not covered in the available literature. Those steps will be covered in this guide. Mondorescuecan be used to backup Linux based systems to physical or virtual media to be used for restoration on the same, similar, or virtual hardware, depending on the preparations taken. Virtualboxis used to install, configure, manage, etc. virtual computer systems.Install the required packages with: sudo aptitude install binutils dosfstools mkisofs syslinux bzip2 gawk parted libparted mtools afio buffer cdrecord
Then download mondorescue: Now install the packages with (run from the folder where they were downloaded): dpkg -i *.deb
If any errors appear when running this command, try running ‘aptitude install' afterwards and the issue should be corrected by installing the packages requested. Once mondorescue is installed, its time to back up our system. Just run the mondoarchive command with the following options: mondoarchive -O -i -N -g -d /data -T /tmp -S /root -E "/mnt" -s 8960m
- -d tells mondoarchive where to store the ISO image will be created
- -T tells mondoarchive where to store temporary data
- -S tells mondoarchive where to build ISO images
- -E tells mondoarchive which folders to exclude from backup
- -s tells mondoarchive the size, in megabytes, to use for the ISO files
Now begins the waiting period while mondoarchive backs up our system. This can take minutes to several hours, depending on the amount of data to be backed up. In part 2, we will discuss how to setup and install your system to virtual hardware using Virtualbox 3.1. Until then, thanks for reading!
About the Author:
Alex Trent is a staff writer for WebProNews
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