Backing Up Paralells Virtual Machines?

[Gryzor]

Hi All,

I've seen somewhere (maybe on Dave's blog) that before backing up a Virtual Machine, it ought (must?) be stopped. If this is true, what could happen if you perform a backup while the machine is running?

I imagine that the Copied "copy" could be corrupt because data might have not been updated by Paralells "cache" or something like that.

Any best practices here?

Thanks for this great product!

[dnanian]

Yes, definitely stop any virtual machines before backing them up. Not only might the on-disk copy of the image not be fully written, but it could be actively written, which would make it look large and fill the destination...

[Gryzor]

Thanks dave, that has got to explain the weird behaviour I was experiencing (and blaming on paralells).

I had a job that ran everyday at noon, while I was having lunch. Needless to say I never closed (nor suspended) Paralells whenever I went out for lunch.

Now I do.

Feature request: Hardcode Paralells code into superduper! so it can check whether a file is a VM and make sure it's not running or -if there's an api- suspend the machine, back it up and then restart it.

Ok, now forget about it and keep doing useful stuff.

[dnanian]

Heh. Unlikely we'll be doing that!

Will continue doing useful stuff...