Book Image

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Cookbook

By : Jakub Gaj, Leemans
5 (1)
Book Image

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Cookbook

5 (1)
By: Jakub Gaj, Leemans

Overview of this book

Dominating the server market, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system gives you the support you need to modernize your infrastructure and boost your organization’s efficiency. Combining both stability and flexibility, RHEL helps you meet the challenges of today and adapt to the demands of tomorrow. This practical Cookbook guide will help you get to grips with RHEL 7 Server and automating its installation. Designed to provide targeted assistance through hands-on recipe guidance, it will introduce you to everything you need to know about KVM guests and deploying multiple standardized RHEL systems effortlessly. Get practical reference advice that will make complex networks setups look like child’s play, and dive into in-depth coverage of configuring a RHEL system. Also including full recipe coverage of how to set up, configuring, and troubleshoot SELinux, you’ll also discover how secure your operating system, as well as how to monitor it.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)
11
Index

Backing up your VM metadata

While a KVM stores some of the resources' configuration on the disk in a human readable format, it is a good idea to query libvirt for the configuration of your resources.

How to do it…

In this recipe we'll back up all relevant KVM metadata by performing the following steps:

Here's the network configuration:

~]# for i in $(virsh net-list --all | sed -e '1,2d' |awk '{print $1}'); do \
    virsh net-dumpxml --network $i --inactive > /tmp/net-$i.xml; \
done

Here's the storage configuration:

~]# for i in $(virsh pool-list --all | sed -e '1,2d' |awk '{print $1}'); do \
    for j in $(virsh vol-list --pool $i |sed -e '1,2d') | awk '{print $1}'; do \
        virsh vol-dumpxml --pool $i --vol $j > /tmp/vol-$j.xml; \
    done \
    virsh pool-dumpxml --pool $i --inactive > /tmp/pool-$i.xml; \
done

Here's the guest configuration:

~]# for i in $(virsh list --all | sed -e '1,2d' |awk '{print $1}'); do \
    virsh dumpxml --domain $i --inactive > /tmp/domain-$i.xml; \
done

How it works…

The virsh net-dumpxml command allows you to dump the precise configuration of the specified network. In combination with virsh net-list, you can create a loop that enumerates all networks and dumps them on the file. By specifying –-all, you will export all networks, even those that are not active. If you do not wish to back up the configuration for nonactive networks, substitute virsh net-list --all with virsh net-list.

Storage pools can be enumerated, similarly to networks, using virsh net-list. However, besides the individual storage pool configuration, we are also interested in the configuration of individual storage volumes. Luckily, both implement a list and dumpxml command! If you're not interested in nonactive pools, you can omit the --all option with virsh pool-list.

Guests can similarly be enumerated and their XML configuration dumped using dumpxml. Again, if you're not interested in nonactive guests, you can omit the --all option with virsh list.

See also

The man page for virsh (1) lists all the possible options for the commands used in the preceding section.