Backing Up Volumes

From Zanecorpwiki

The key backing up volumes is the use of the 'logical volume management' facility. With LVM volumes one can create a snapshot:

lvcreate -n foo_s -L 1G -s /dev/vg1/foo

would create a snapshot (via -s) volume of 'foo' named 'foo_s'. The size of the snapshot is used to record changes between the original and the snapshot volume and, unless the snapshot is going to be long lived, is usually set much smaller than the size of the original volume.

You can now back up the snapshot and be assured that you're getting a consistent view of the files. Generally, even with database or other rapidly changing files it's safe to restore form a snapshot.