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IT_User
Asked: 2016-03-24 11:37:05 +0800 CST

Make copy of OVA before restoration or not

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Good afternoon,

When having to restore a virtual machine from a backed-up OVA file, should you select the source as the actual file itself or should you create a copy of the backed up file before importing? I am not sure if anything during the restoration process could potentially affect the OVA file itself (loss of network connection, cancelled import, etc.) or if the restoration process is simply reading from the OVA file. Ex.

OVA Location = /backup/mainServer.ova

Should you import an OVA directly from /backup/mainServer.ova or should you...

cp /backup/mainServer.ova /tmp/mainServer.ova

and THEN proceed to import the OVA from /tmp/mainServer.ova

From my understanding an OVA is made up of the files that are needed individually from VM/ESXI although it is not apparent if while importing the software is able to merely read the file and pull the necessary information or if the file is modified/opened or accessed in in any way that could have a possibility of corrupting the file based off errors or unexpected actions during the import process itself.

I have checked the file during uploading and I cannot see a way to tell if the file is modified/access or just read from. Hash sums are the same before/after so nothing is "modified". But that does not mean that the file isn't accessed in a way that could corrupt it from the actual import process.

linux

1 Answers

  1. Restoration should only read the file.

    But seriously.

    If you're that concerned about it, and if you truly only have a single copy of this OVA, then back it up somewhere else. This seems like a truly silly question to be asking, when the solution to your concerns is so simple.

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