Snapshot : quick magic backup

Snapshots

This is a very useful feature. Many of us have the situation where important data needs to be backed up, but it cannot be used while the backup is running because then the backed up files would be out of sync with each other. For example, you have an accounting system that is recording orders. The accounts receivable file gets backed up now, and you take an order. Both a/r and the customer file get updated to reflect the new order, but a/r has already been backed up. When the customer file finally makes it to tape, it's not consistent with a/r, and of course it needs to be. Without snapshots, your only recourse is to stop taking orders while the backup runs. If you have lots of disk space, you could copy the whole accounting system and backup the copy, but that can take a lot of time too, and you may not have the space. Snapshots are the solution. Before you do the next step, make sure you've put a few files in /little, and make at least one of them unimportant. Then create the snapshot.

lvcreate --size 200M --snapshot -n mysnap /dev/Volume00/mylv
mkdir /mylvsnap
mount /dev/Volume00/mysnap /mylvsnap
df

Right off the bat you should have noticed something strange. We created mysnap very specifically with a size of 200MB, and trust me, that's all it took away from us, but df shows it being the same size (6GB) as mylv. We'll get back to why this is in a minute, but first take a look at the files in /snap. They are identical to the files in /mylv, right? OK, now go edit a file in /mylv. Does it change in /snap? No, it does not. Remove a file in /mylv - it's still there in /snap. Add a new file to /mylv, and that does NOT appear in /snap. How is this done, and most especially how is it done in 200MB?

It's not magic

OK, it is magic. What is going on is that /snap contains absolutely nothing UNLESS something changes back at /mylv. If you ask for a file from /snap that has not changed, the data is read right from /mylv. But if a file IS changed, before the change is written, the data blocks that don't yet have the changes are written to /snap. Note that entire files are NOT written, just data blocks that are about to change. So, as long as we don't change more than 200MB worth of data in /mylv, we can have our cake and eat it too. Our procedure will be:

• Stop using the filesystem, shut down any databases that need to be shutdown etc.
• Create the snapshot
• Start up our databases, go back to work.
• Start backing up /snap

Our time without access is minutes or seconds - just however long it takes to stop the processes and restart them, basically. The backup can take its sweet time. Well it can if it doesn't take so long that we need more than 200 MB to store our data that is changing. That does mean that the size of mysnap does have to be a bit of an educated guess. It also means that as soon as you are done with the backup, mysnap should be removed:

umount /snap
lvremove /dev/Volume00/msnap

If you don't remove it, it will go on copying data as it is changed and eventually it will run out of room. You can't just leave it there for next time!

Some other helpful links:

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/index.html
http://ds9a.nl/lvm-howto/HOWTO/cvs/lvm-howto/output/lvm-howto.html

http://aplawrence.com/Linux/lvm.html