Hi!
I am administering a system I didn't configure. I know it is a RHEL 6.3 VM image and there are others as well. How do I make a backup of the image and of the filesytems, in case I screw up the configuration.

How can I restore it as well.

My plan is this
1) Find out what kind of VM, and use the vm tools
2) Take a tar of important directories
3) Schedule filesystem backup

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks md888

Can you post name of the software you're using for VM? Also is it a fully virtualized or a para/hardware assisted environment?
you'll also need to determine the directory where the image of RHEL is being stored, in KVM i think it's by default. I don't know if it is possible to take backup selected directories and use them on a different machine as a fully fledged VM.
You could tar and gzip the original RHEL image and use it as a backup and deploy multiple instances of RHEL on multiple machines but you'll need to sort out licensing issues. If you screw up you could copy the un-tarred image to the directory where the Virtualization software will look for OS images.
For backing up your system you can use rsync, dump, AMANDA

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It depends on what type of virtualization software you are using. Unless you specify that, it is difficult to specify.

You can also use snapshot feature before trying anything. If you've messed up, you can just rollback.

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Thanks guys, would there be a way I can check what kind of virtualization software the server is running using some command?
M8

I'm aware of VirtualBox and KVM virtualization technology.

You can do following to figure out which virtualization technology you are using.

In Terminal enter following:

For VirtualBox:
If you get any results, then you are using VirtualBox. Note that you have to issue this command only from that user where VirtualBox app is installed.

For KVM:
If you get any results, then your are using KVM.

If you dont get any results, then probably you are using other technology (probably VMWare), which i'm not aware of, or not using VM at all.

Edit: Just googled. If you want to check - for VMWare, then enter following in terminal:

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