How To Configure an External Hard Drive as Local Storage on XCP-ng

Introduction

In my lab, I have jacked up some of my virtual machines while making a configuration or a change and accidentally forgot to take a snapshot. In this scenario, restoring to a recent backup would be helpful so I could revert to the working state of the machine. Unfortunately, I did not have any automated backups for my virtual machines. So, I had to manually rebuild the machine which can be a long, tedious, and defeating process.

Since I still haven’t bit the bullet to invest in a NAS, I will be using a Western Digital external hard drive as storage to hold my backups to my virtual machines. This process wasn’t as straightforward as I thought it would be for plug-and-play.

Why are backups important?

Backups are essential for recovering from hardware failures, accidental deletions, misconfigurations, malware, and the list can go on. Backups give your IT departments a little peace of mind knowing they have a means of recovery in case of disaster. Periodically, you should test your backups to ensure that they are recoverable.

Configure External Hard Drive on XCP

Step 1 – XCP-ng Console work

Here is what my local storage repository looks like before adding the storage device.

Plug your hard drive into your machine and then head over to XCP-ng. Go to the USB tab and ensure USB pass-through is enabled.

Go to the console. Type fdisk -l. This command is used to list the partitions on your server's hard drives.

From this output I know that my Western Digital hardrive is disk /dev/sdb.

Type in the cmd cd /dev/disk/by-id and then ls

You will see all the current disks and partitions on your server. I will be using the usb-WD_My_Passport_259F_575835314134364E45584141-0:0. You will input that in the /dev/disk/by-id/<insert your storage here>. Make sure to also grab your hosts UUID.

We will use the following cmd to create a storage repository for your external storage.

xe sr-create type=lvm content-type=user device-config:device=/dev/disk/by-id/usb-USB_Flash_Drive_AA04012700007933 name-label=”Local USB Storage” host-uuid=<UUID of the host> shared=false

Now check your Local Storage Repositories

Now I can use Xen Orchestra to automate backups to my VMs using my new storage device. I will most likely make another article in the future and go through Xen Orchestra and how to configure backups.