Backing up logical volumes

Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent for Linux can access, back up and recover such volumes when running in Linux with 2.6.x kernel or a Linux-based bootable media. 

  Backup (GUI)

In Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 GUI, logical volumes appear under Dynamic & GPT Volumes at the end of the list of volumes available for backup.

To back up all available disks, specify all logical volumes plus basic volumes not belonging to them. This is the default choice when you open the Create backup plan page.

Basic volumes included in logical volumes are shown in the list with None in the File system column. If you select such volumes, the program will back them up sector-by-sector. Normally it is not required. 

  Recovery

When recovering logical volumes, you have two options:

  • Recovering volume contents only. The type or other properties of the target volume will not change.

    This option is available both in the operating system and under bootable media.

    This option is useful in the following cases:

    • When some data on the volume was lost, but no hard disks were replaced.
    • When recovering a logical volume over a basic (MBR) disk or volume. You can resize the resulting volume in this case.

      A system, recovered from a logical volume backup to a basic MBR disk, cannot boot because its kernel tries to mount the root file system at the logical volume. To boot the system, change the loader configuration and /etc/fstab so that LVM is not used and reactivate your boot loader.

    • When recovering a basic or logical volume to a previously created logical volume. Such is the case when you create the structure of logical volumes manually by using the lvm utility.
  • Recovering both the structure of logical volumes and their contents.

    Such is the case when recovering on bare metal or on a machine with different volume structure. The structure of logical volumes can be automatically created at the time of recovery, if it has been saved in the backup.

    This option is available only under bootable media.

For detailed instructions on how to recover logical volumes, see Recovering MD devices and logical volumes.

Helpful link:

  • http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/

Backing up logical volumes