Howto Backup VM's in XenServer

I found this technique to be the easiest and most efficient, importing the whole virtual machine to *xva file. Though it's not the quickest method it worked flawlessly for me.

1. At XenServer console as root, mount some SR (CIFS or NFS) to a folder:

#mount -t cifs //myfiler01/ntfs_share /backup/

2. Check the mount:

#mount |grep backup

3. To find the VM you want to export Run:

#xe vm-list

4. Run the export VM command:

#xe vm-export vm=centos5 filename=/backup/centos5_backup.xva

That's it, the VM exported as *.xva file which is easy to import in case of failure. 

In case you want to import the VM, run:

#xe vm-import vm=centos5 filename=/backup/centos5_backup.xva