Categories: XenServer, Alike v3, Alike v4

Introduction

Please Note: As an alternative to XenServer’s native quiesced snapshots, you may wish to consider Alike’s Q-Hybrid approach. Q-Hybrid also leverages in-guest VSS snapshots, but has performance and flexibility benefits as well.

Enabling Quiesced support in your VM

In order to take quiesced snapshots within XenServer, and therefore use them in Alike, you must first install the XenTools package, as well as the Xen VSS provider, in your target VM. Fortunately this is an extremely simple process, but it does require that you reboot the VM.

Step 1.

Insert the Citrix XenTools ISO on the VM in XenCenter:

Step 2.

Run the Citrix XenTools installer to completion:

Step 3.

Now, finally run the “Install-XenProvider.cmd” script, as shown below:

Step 4.

Reboot the VM. If this step is not take, XenSever will be unable to take valid, quiesced snapshots.

You are now free to enable Quiesced snapshots from the Alike job options:

And when your job runs, you should see the following line, confirming that Alike is now using quiesced snapshots to protect your VM:

Final Notes

If you need assistance enabling XenServer’s quiesced snapshots in Alike, please open a support ticket. See the KB article, “How to Use Quadric Support,” for instructions on how to open a ticket.