Virtualization makes another thing easier: complete, bare-metal backups. With this contributed package (vzdump), it is very easy to make backups of complete VE, sometimes with only little distruption.

Features:

• Can send an e-mail when finished
• Can compress the resulting tarball
• Can selectively back up individual VE, or just all of them
• Can use different method to make sure the snapshot is consistent (stop the VE, suspend the VE, LVM snapshot)
• Restoring is very easy and the VEID can be different than the original
• Can do differential backup using xdelta (not tested myself)

Steps to setup my asterisk server in an OpenVZ VE

• Set the VE up
• Install asterisk
• wget ftp://ftp.digium.com/pub/asterisk/asterisk-1.2-current.tar.gz
• tar -xzf asterisk-1.2-current.tar.gz
• cd asterisk-1.2.18/
• yum install glibc-devel ncurses-devel gcc openssl-devel zlib-devel
• make
• make mpg123
• make install
• make config
• Edit /usr/sbin/safe_asterisk to comment out the line about TTY 9

• Start asterisk
• Copy asterisk config files (/etc/asterisk/*)
• Copy moh mp3’s (/var/lib/asterisk/mohmp3/)
• Copy custom sounds (IVR)
• Copy voicemail directory
• Get french sounds :
• wget ftp://ftp.digium.com/pub/telephony/sounds/asterisk-core-sounds-fr-wav-current.tar.gz
• tar -xzf asterisk-core-sounds-fr-wav-current.tar.gz
• Use the script “install_french.sh” (must be run in /var/lib/asterisk/sounds/fr) (see below for script)

• Change DNS records
• Test!
• Create backups (with vzdump)

install_french script:

#!/bin/bash

# Script creant des liens symboliques permetannt l'utilisation des fichiers audios plus rapidement## Clod Patry (removed e-mail address)# Version 1.0 05/5/2006 (happy birthday mom)

SOUNDS_ABS=/var/lib/asterisk/soundsLANGUAGE=fr

#rootif [ ! -e $SOUNDS_ABS ]; thenecho "Le repertoire $SOUNDS_ABS ne semble pas exister. Installez asterisk ou corriger le \$SOUNDS_ABS";exit;fi

DIR=dictateCUR=$PWD/$DIRif [ ! -e $SOUNDS_ABS/$DIR/$LANGUAGE ]; thenif [ ! -e $CUR ]; then              echo "Le repertoire $CUR ne semble pas exister.";      else              ln -s $CUR $SOUNDS_ABS/$DIR/$LANGUAGE      fielseecho "Impossible de creer $SOUNDS_ABS/$DIR/$LANGUAGE , il existe deja."fi

DIR=digitsCUR=$PWD/$DIRif [ ! -e $SOUNDS_ABS/$DIR/$LANGUAGE ]; then      if [ ! -e $CUR ]; then              echo "Le repertoire $CUR ne semble pas exister.";      else              ln -s $CUR $SOUNDS_ABS/$DIR/$LANGUAGE      fielse      echo "Impossible de creer $SOUNDS_ABS/$DIR/$LANGUAGE , il existe deja."fi

DIR=lettersCUR=$PWD/$DIRif [ ! -e $SOUNDS_ABS/$DIR/$LANGUAGE ]; then      if [ ! -e $CUR ]; then              echo "Le repertoire $CUR ne semble pas exister.";      else              ln -s $CUR $SOUNDS_ABS/$DIR/$LANGUAGE      fielse      echo "Impossible de creer $SOUNDS_ABS/$DIR/$LANGUAGE , il existe deja."fi

DIR=phoneticCUR=$PWD/$DIRif [ ! -e $SOUNDS_ABS/$DIR/$LANGUAGE ]; thenif [ ! -e $CUR ]; then echo "Le repertoire $CUR ne semble pas exister.";else       ln -s $CUR $SOUNDS_ABS/$DIR/$LANGUAGEfielse      echo "Impossible de creer $SOUNDS_ABS/$DIR/$LANGUAGE , il existe deja."fi