I have created a snapshot of a Citrix XenServer virtual machine using XenCenter, and now I would like to save this snapshot as an *.xva file, just as if I right-click on the snapshot icon in XenCenter and choose "Export to file…".
However since the VM has a size of 100 GByte I would rather do this operation from the XenServer console and save it right to a fast NFS mounted volume instead of downloading the VM through a slow network connection.
Please advise how to do this via the console. I spent some time googling but was unable to find a solution for this particular problem.
Best Answer
Once you snapshot a server you can export that snapshot to locally mounted storage such as NFS. Take a look at a free script written by Andy Burton Here:
http://blog.andyburton.co.uk/index.php/2009-08/citrix-xenserver-automated-live-vm-backup-to-windows-cifs-share/
I have cut and pasted the relevant command from his script below.