[Review]: Oracle OVM-BKP v1.0 – Virtual Machine Backup Utilities for Oracle VM

by Davoud Teimouri · Published 23/02/2018 · Updated 23/02/2018

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What’s Oracle OVM-BKP?

Oracle VM Backup Utilities (OVM-BKP) is a backup solution for Oracle VM 3.4. It allows to take backup from virtual machines, manage the backups and restore the backups via Oracle VM Manager easily.

The OVM-BKP must be installed on Oracle VM Manager machine and there is no other option. Oracle VM Backup Utility can take backup from VMs when the VM is located on OCFS2 repositories, VMs running on NFS share will be stopped during backup process.

Solution Architecture

Lets review that how the solution works.

OVM-BKP gets a crash-consistent backup from running virtual machines and stores backup file on a media server or other external storage system, the solution is not so different with other backup solution!

OVM-BKP is a rookie and I think, it gets better in the next releases.

OVM-BKP Solution Architecture

All the backup operations will be executed starting from Oracle VM Manager machine managing the Oracle VM Pool(s); the entire solution is based on scripts and Oracle VM CLI interface.
On the picture above operations like “Replicas by NDMP” or “Backup to Media Server” have to be managed by your own existing solution; “ovm-bkp” utilities will manage backups taken and saved on the dedicated “NFS Repository”.

Which Backup Types Are Supported?

Oracle VM Backup Utilities (OVM-BKP) supports the below backup types:

FULL: the backup will be a full sparse copy of the virtual machine configuration file and all virtual disks saved to the Oracle VM repository specified into the Virtual Machine configuration file.
SNAP: the backup will be a copy of the virtual machine configuration file and an OCFS2 ref-link of all virtual disks; the backup will remain on same repository as source Virtual Machine.
OVA: the backup will be an OVA file created from the Virtual Machine.

Conclusion

I didn’t test the backup solution in my test environment but it’s very good that Oracle provides a backup solution for Oracle VM. The backup utility is so rookie but it’s enough for now.

There is some limitation about getting backup and there is no replication feature for on-site or offsite. Also there is no advanced feature but I think, if Oracle customers find the virtualization solution useful, the backup solution will evolve in the feature.