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3 Replies Last post: Jan 20, 2006 3:35 PM by devzero  

Rsync to offsite location posted: Jan 15, 2006 12:38 AM

Click to view jackalope's profile Novice 17 posts since
Oct 31, 2005
Hello,
I'm running GSX 3.x on a SUSE 9.3 host. I'd like to make a cron job to rsync from GSX host-A to GSX host-B housed in another location.

Given the link between site A and site B is a WAN link (~ 4 T-1s) I'd like to find the most efficient way of only shipping the deltas in the files.

Is this possible? Is there another way I should do this? I'd rather do this on the host and not within the VM's. (Since the VMs are being used by developers who knows if cron will be running at any given time)

Thanks,
-Terry

Re: Rsync to offsite location

1. Jan 15, 2006 5:59 AM in response to: jackalope
Click to view KevinG's profile Guru 16,980 posts since
Jan 8, 2004
I believe that the best way would be to use the vmware-cmd utility to suspend the virtual machine(s) and copy the full contents for the virtual machine directory from HostA to HostB

vmware-cmd <PathToVmxFile> suspend

** Copy from A to B **

vmware-cmd <PathToVmxFile> start

You should never copy a virtual machine while it is running.
You need to suspend or shutdown the virtual machine.

Re: Rsync to offsite location

2. Jan 20, 2006 3:32 PM in response to: KevinG
Click to view devzero's profile Master 2,747 posts since
Dec 27, 2004
Given the link between site A and site B is a WAN link (~ 4 T-1s) I'd like to find
the most efficient way of only shipping the deltas in the files.

actually, rsync is doing this - it is just shipping the deltas.
the "issue" is, that it writes a new file on the remote system.
for big files, it would be nice, if the sync would be "in-place".

maybe there are some other tools around for that.

for example, there is a modified rsync which is doing an in-place rsync:
see: http://hssl.cs.jhu.edu/ip-rsync/

maybe worth a try.

regards
roland

Re: Rsync to offsite location

3. Jan 20, 2006 3:35 PM in response to: devzero
Click to view devzero's profile Master 2,747 posts since
Dec 27, 2004
oh - reading the actual manpage of rsync, there seems to be such option in the original rsync now:

http://samba.anu.edu.au/ftp/rsync/rsync.html

--inplace update destination files in-place

regards
roland

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