16.7. Configuration

Global configuration is stored in /etc/vzdump.conf. The file uses a simple colon separated key/value format. Each line has the following format:

OPTION: value

Blank lines in the file are ignored, and lines starting with a # character are treated as comments and are also ignored. Values from this file are used as default, and can be overwritten on the command line.

We currently support the following options:

bwlimit: <integer> (0 - N) (default = 0)
Limit I/O bandwidth (KBytes per second).
compress: <0 | 1 | gzip | lzo | zstd> (default = 0)
Compress dump file.
dumpdir: <string>
Store resulting files to specified directory.
exclude-path: <string>
Exclude certain files/directories (shell globs). Paths starting with / are anchored to the container’s root, other paths match relative to each subdirectory.
ionice: <integer> (0 - 8) (default = 7)
Set CFQ ionice priority.
lockwait: <integer> (0 - N) (default = 180)
Maximal time to wait for the global lock (minutes).
mailnotification: <always | failure> (default = always)
Specify when to send an email
mailto: <string>
Comma-separated list of email addresses or users that should receive email notifications.
maxfiles: <integer> (1 - N)
Deprecated: use prune-backups instead. Maximal number of backup files per guest system.
mode: <snapshot | stop | suspend> (default = snapshot)
Backup mode.
pigz: <integer> (default = 0)
Use pigz instead of gzip when N>0. N=1 uses half of cores, N>1 uses N as thread count.
pool: <string>
Backup all known guest systems included in the specified pool.
prune-backups: [keep-all=<1|0>] [,keep-daily=<N>] [,keep-hourly=<N>] [,keep-last=<N>] [,keep-monthly=<N>] [,keep-weekly=<N>] [,keep-yearly=<N>] (default = keep-all=1)

Use these retention options instead of those from the storage configuration.

remove: <boolean> (default = 1)
Prune older backups according to prune-backups.
script: <string>
Use specified hook script.
stdexcludes: <boolean> (default = 1)
Exclude temporary files and logs.
stopwait: <integer> (0 - N) (default = 10)
Maximal time to wait until a guest system is stopped (minutes).
storage: <string>
Store resulting file to this storage.
tmpdir: <string>
Store temporary files to specified directory.
zstd: <integer> (default = 1)
Zstd threads. N=0 uses half of the available cores, N>0 uses N as thread count.

Example vzdump.conf Configuration. 

tmpdir: /mnt/fast_local_disk
storage: my_backup_storage
mode: snapshot
bwlimit: 10000