TrilioVault for RHV does provide the capabilties to take application consistent backups by utilizing the Qemu-Guest-Agent.
The Qemu-Guest-Agent is a component of the qemu hypervisor, which is used by RHV. RHV automatically builds all VMs to be prepared to use the Qemu-Guest-Agent.
The Qemu-Guest-Agent provides many capabilities, including the possibility to freeze and thaw Virtual Machines Filesystems.
The Qemu-Guest-Agent is not developed or maintained by Trilio. Trilio does leverage standard capabilities of the Qemu-Guest-Agent to send freeze and thaw commands to the protected VMS during a backup process.
The Qemu-Guest-Agent needs to be installed inside the VM.
The Qemu-Guest-Agent requires a special SCSI interface in the VM definition. This interface is automatically created by RHV upon spinning up the Virtual Machine.
The installation process depends on the Guest Operating System.
Windows Guests require the installation of the VirtIO drivers and tools. These are provided by Red Hat in a prepared ISO-file. For RHV 4.3 please follow this documentation: RHV 4.3 Windows Guest Agents For RHV 4.4 please follow this documentation: RHV 4.4 Windows Guest Agents
The Qemu-Guest-Agent is calling the fsfreeze-hook.sh script either with the freeze or the thaw argument depending on the current operation.
The fsfreeze-hook.sh script is a normal shell script. It is typically used to do all necessary steps to get an application into a consistent state for the freeze or to undo all freeze operations upon the thaw.
The fs-freeze-hook.sh script default path is:
The fsfreeze-hook.sh script does not require a special content.
It is recommended to provide a case identifier for the freeze and thaw argument. This can be achieved for example by the following bash code:
This example flushes the MySQL tables to the disks and keeps a read lock to prevent further write access until the thaw has been done.