I have a linux which has some mysql database in it , last week , I have copy the whole system ( includes structure , partiion , data ..etc ) to VM , everything in the VM is exactly the same as original server , I shutdown the original server and run the new server , it works fine .

Now , I would like to resume it back to original server , can advise if I want to copy all mysql databases from the VM to original server , what I need to do is simply remote copy the database directory to the original server ( assume the database are in a single directory ) ? or I need to use the mysqldump to export data and import it back to the database ?


Thanks.

You can do either. Copyhing the whole directory is much easier.