Hi Mittel,
I am the next one man who will be happy if U can post or send me Ur backup scripts.. so I can use them as template for my ESX3 backup script while I dont have Consolidated BackUp.

Thanx KaZaN

OK here it is, I hope it's of some use to people. I'm intending on expanding it to support FTP/VMFS at some point and also get it to send emails of logs.

I know using the IP address may seem like a strange choice, but I found backing up based on vmname unreliable as some of my VMs do not have the same domain name as my esx host. vcbVmName only returns hostname and IP (and moref/uuid but I wanted vm name for the folder names). Can't go wrong if you use a VMs IP so I used that.

You can run it on one host pointing at your VC server, or on each host pointing at itself to make a host backup it's VMs without needing VC.

[code]#!/bin/bash
#
# chmod 700 this file to prevent non-root access to passwords
#
# schedule from /etc/cron.d as root or from roots crontab
#
#### If passwords contains special characters put them in single quotes
mountdir=/mnt/backup
remotedir=backup
smbserver=smb.domain.com
smbuser=backup
smbpass=password
host=VC.domain.com/esxhost.domain.com
searchtype='powerstate:on'
tempdir=/tmp
user=administrator/root
password=password
#
#
#########################################################################
#start script
#########################################################################

#### Mount SMB backup folder ####
if test ! -e "$mountdir" ; then
mkdir $mountdir
fi
mount -t smbfs -o username=$smbuser,password=$smbpass //$smbserver/$remotedir $mountdir
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
echo "SMB MOUNT UNSUCCESSFUL"
exit
fi

#### Determine what VMs are on this host ####
for i in `/usr/sbin/vcbVmName -h $host -u $user -p $password -s powerstate:on | grep ipaddr: | awk -F: '{print $2}'`
do echo $i >> $tempdir/hostVMs.txt
done

#### Put VM IP addresses in excludedVMs.txt to stop them being backed up
if test ! -e "$tempdir/excludedVMs.txt" ; then
touch $tempdir/excludedVMs.txt
fi
sort -f -o $tempdir/excludedVMs.txt $tempdir/excludedVMs.txt
sort -f -o $tempdir/hostVMs.txt $tempdir/hostVMs.txt
comm -2 -3 $tempdir/hostVMs.txt $tempdir/excludedVMs.txt > $tempdir/backupVMs.txt

#### Backup non-exluded VMs ####
cat $tempdir/backupVMs.txt |
while read vmip
do vmname=`nslookup $vmip | grep name | awk -F'= ' '{print $2}' | awk -F. '{print $1}'`
echo Backing up VM....
echo $vmname #print what host we're working on
echo $vmip
if test -e $mountdir/$vmname-old; then
rm -rf $mountdir/$vmname-old #remove old backup
fi
if test -e $mountdir/$vmname; then
mv $mountdir/$vmname $mountdir/$vmname-old #archive previous backup
fi
/usr/sbin/vcbMounter -h $host -u $user -p $password -a ipaddr:$vmip -r $mountdir/$vmname > $mountdir/$vmname.log
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
echo "Backup FAILED for $vmname with the following errors:" >> $mountdir/errors.log
fi
cat $mountdir/$vmname.log | grep Error >> $mountdir/errors.log
done

#### Clean up temporary files ####
rm -f $tempdir/hostVMs.txt[/code]

Here is a SCRIPT provided by TAS that attempts to do what vmbk.pl was doing with ESX 2.5.x.:

http://www.techarchsolutions.com/downloads.asp

Have FUN!

Michael Pozar

What user are you running the script as? What username and password have you used in the script?

hostVMs.txt should contain a list of IPs of VMs on the ESX host or VC server that are powered on. The error you're getting implies that hostVMs.txt is empty, so null is returned for $vmname and the script tries to do "mv /mnt/backup/ /mnt/backup/-old #archive previous backup" which isn't allowed so throws an error.

Try running the following and see if you get a list of IPs returned to the console. You need to run all of this as root, $user is root or administrator for esxhost or vc server respectively.

[code]/usr/sbin/vcbVmName -h $host -u $user -p $password -s powerstate:on | grep ipaddr: | awk -F: '{print $2}'[/code]

Also check out this thread I've revised the script slightly.

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=58570

Right, well that means that vcbVmName is being passed incorrect parameters. Can you tell me what you've put in the variables at the top of the script? (not including your passwords or real IPs of course!)

You need to fill in the variables at the top of the script with information appropriate for your environment. e.g. root as the user if you're pointing the script at a single ESX host, or administrator if you're pointing the script at your VC server.

You need to change most of them, but you can leave the /mnt/backup and /tmp paths as they are.

e.g.

mountdir=/mnt/backup #you can leave this
remotedir=backup #this needs to be your SMB mount name
smbserver=smb.domain.com #this needs to be your SMB server FQDN
smbuser=backup #this needs to be a user on your SMB server with access to your backup share
smbpass=password #above users password
host=VC.domain.com/esxhost.domain.com #the FQDN of your ESX host or VC server
searchtype='powerstate:on' #leave this to backup powered on VMs
tempdir=/tmp #you can leave this
user=administrator/root #administrator for VC, root for an ESX host
password=password #above users password

So do I add this line to the backup script?

/usr/sbin/vcbVmName -h $host -u $user -p $password -s powerstate:on | grep ipaddr: | awk -F: '{print $2}'

Like I said, I am not a linux scripting guru, and I am trying to understand how this works. Thanks