1) You need to enable access into the ESXi console.
Follow these instructions to do this: http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/ESXi_enable_SSH.php
2) Optional: If you mainly do work in Windows (if not skip to 3 ), open the ghettoVCBni.sh up in notepad (this is asuming you've already downloaded the script from http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-8760) and change:
VM_BACKUP_VOLUME=/vmfs/volumes/kevin-test-nfs-storage
to reflect whatever datastore you want to store your backups in. In your case, this would be the name of your second local datastore. The datastore MUST have a /vmfs/volumes/ preceding it. Another option you should look at is how many previous backups you want to keep for each virtual machine. This can be edited on the line:
VM_BACKUP_ROTATION_COUNT=3
Warning: DO NOT PRESS RETURN AFTER ANY LINES INSIDE NOTEPAD AS THIS CAN POSSIBLY BREAK THE SCRIPT.
3) SCP the ghettoVCBni.sh file onto the ESXi server. You can use WinSCP (the username is root, the password is whatever management password you gave ESXi) to do this if you are running Windows, else, use the *nix scp command. (e.g. from the source run: scp ghettoVCBni.sh root@192.168.0.100: )
4) Either SSH into the ESXi server using "putty" or something or physically go (or use digital KVM or whatever) to the ESXi console itself and login as root.
5) Make a file on the ESXi server that lists the VMs that you want to backup.
There are two easy ways to do this:
A) Create the backup_vms file inside the ESXi console
If you know how to use a *nix text editing tool like vi then use it to make a text file that has all of the display names for the virtual machines that you want to back up. Remember that there is a new line for every virtual machine's display name.
If you don't know how to use any *nix text editing tools, the easiest (although tedious ) way to do this inside the ESXi console is:
echo VM1 > backup_vms
echo VM2 >> backup_vms
echo VM3 >> backup_vms
To check your work, run: cat backup_vms
the output should look like:
~ # cat backup_vms
VM1
VM2
VM3
~ #
If it doesn't, run: rm backup_vms and start over (hence, the tedious remark). Someone chime in if there's a way to do this without rm'ing it or editing it with vi.
B) Create the backup_vms file on a separate system and SCP it into the ESXi server. You have to be careful though, don't use notepad because after every return, it'll add in ^M (hence the warning up top). This is bad. Again, you can check your work using cat backup_vms inside the ESXi console (after you scp it over of course) to make sure there aren't any weird characters.
Remember, the virtual machines inside the backup_vms file MUST be registered on the ESXi host (i.e. existing in the ESXi host's inventory inside vi-client). Also, it would be easiest to have the ghettoVCBni.sh and backup_vms file to be in the same directory. For this document, it's assuming that you are in /. To make sure you are there, use pwd. To go there use: cd /
5) If you didn't follow the optional step 2 then edit the ghettoVCBni.sh script using a text editor inside the ESXi console and change:
VM_BACKUP_VOLUME=/vmfs/volumes/kevin-test-nfs-storage
to reflect whatever datastore you want to store your backups in. In your case, this would be the name of your second local datastore. The datastore MUST have a /vmfs/volumes/ preceding it. Another option you should look at is how many previous backups you want to keep for each virtual machine.
This can be edited on the line:
VM_BACKUP_ROTATION_COUNT= 3
6) Change permissions on script to allow execution: chmod +x ghettoVCBni.sh
7) Run the script. In this document's case: ghettoVCBni.sh backup_vms
8) Sit and wait or go do something else.
These instructions also apply to ESX ( minus step 1 ). Oh yeah, this script can be executed on live (powered on) virtual machines and you don't need any extra gimmicks to run it.
Have a good day,
Tuan
