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Backup and Restoration QCOW2 and XML Configuration

This guide will walk you through the process of backing up and restoring your virt-manager virtual machines, virsh provides a simple way to backup and restore virtual machines. This is useful for safeguarding your virtual machines against unexpected issues and ensuring that you can recover them quickly when needed.

Backup XML Configuration​

  1. Locate the XML configuration files of your virtual machines. These files contain all the essential configuration details.

    /etc/libvirt/qemu/

  2. Identify the name of the virtual machine you want to back up. You can use the following command to list all available virtual machines:

    sudo virsh list --all

  3. Dump the XML configuration of your chosen virtual machine into a new XML file:

    sudo virsh dumpxml vm_name > vm_name.xml

    Replace vm_name with the actual name of your virtual machine.

Backup qcow2 Disk Image​

  1. Locate the qcow2 disk image files of your virtual machines. These files contain the actual system files.

    /var/lib/libvirt/images/

  2. Copy the qcow2 disk image file of your chosen virtual machine to your backup location:

    sudo cp /var/lib/libvirt/images/vm_name.qcow2 backup_location/

    Replace vm_name with the name of your virtual machine and backup_location with the desired backup directory.

Restore Backup​

  1. Move the backed-up qcow2 disk image file to the original directory:

    sudo mv backup_location/vm_name.qcow2 /var/lib/libvirt/images/

  2. Move the backed-up XML configuration file to the original directory:

    sudo mv backup_location/vm_name.xml /etc/libvirt/qemu/

  3. Define the virtual machine using the restored XML configuration file, This will register the virtual machine with libvirt, making it available on virt-manager, and then start the virt-manager application will show the restored virtual machine.

    sudo virsh define --file /etc/libvirt/qemu/vm_name.xml