FTP on ESXi 3.5??

[wmarques]

I have been bangin my head against our VM server for a while now trying to enable FTP so that we can back up the virtual machine files to another location in case the ESXi server were to meet an untimely end. I do not have the consolidated back up option. I have read multiple documents about removing the # comment from the inetd.conf file and then restarting the services or rebooting the server. I have done all of this and still can not get the ftp to work. I have managed to connect to the console using SSH, but no luck with ftp. When I try to FTP it returns the following...... -ash: ftp: not found

Anyone have this problem?

[birnenschnitzel]

Enabling NFS server functionality in an Linux based server requires a kernel module and some user daemons. I think it will be impossible to compile the module yourself. I once compiled the NFS module on a fake VMWare Linux machine. After placing it via /bootbank/oem.tgz into the boot process the VM host ended in an PSOD. Use FTP/WGET to access your machines with fast transfers.

Best regards

[IT_Architect]

Thank you for replying so quickly. Actually, FTP/WGET could work for both VM cross-server backups, and backups from the web server as their control panels have provisions to ftp their backups to another host. I'm guessing that it would be best to just patch ESXi U3 as necessary and not update to U4.

Thanks tons!

[IT_Architect]

said: FTP:You can download a small packet at this location (sorry for the external link).

I followed the link. When I got to the page, it showed something called FileFactory at the top, and Proftpd.zip part way down. Then I clicked on another link and ended up on something that talks about buying memberships. I simply want to ftp between VMFS3 partition on two different ESXi hosts.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

I have it below along with a ready to go oem.tgz file. Over the weekend I'll be adding an updated wget file (to support folder copies) and tweaking the config file to enable faster logins.

http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/ESXi_enable_FTP.php

[IT_Architect]

I have it below along with a ready to go oem.tgz file.

Thanks tons!

Over the weekend I'll be adding an updated wget file (to support folder copies) and tweaking the config file to enable faster logins.

I'll be watching for it.

[DSTAVERT]

IT_Architect

You mentioned this being a hosted webserver environment. If this is public you might want to think more about opening yourself up to attack. Are the ESXi hosts behind firewalls? Is the management network separate from the public adresses??

[IT_Architect]

Are the ESXi hosts behind firewalls? Is the management network separate from the public adresses??

The ESXi hosts are only accessible from the VPN and within the our servers private VLAN. The DC locks me out half the time when the reconfigure the network. :smileyblush: On the VM side, I have a couple on the private NIC, one FreeNAS and a Windows server. These are usually off. On the public NIC, we have twin sites fetching data around the web, creating .png images, looking up info in MySQL and and serving between 4 (3AM) and 27 pages a second,(9AM-5PM) per server. We started with these because if ESXi can stand up to them, then we can use it as a basis for hosting customers without concern. Moreover both networks have portable IPs so we can move pretty much at will within the DC without disrupting anything.

Thanks!

[IT_Architect]

Over the weekend I'll be adding an updated wget file (to support folder copies) and...

Your combination is genius.

• 1. WGET to move things rapidly between servers

• 2. FTP so client OSes can access info on VMFS.

• 3. ISOs stored on VMFS so that the VI Client can access them to install VMs

• 4. VM backups stored on VMFS so they can be activated at any time.

• 5. Add a free copy of Windows 2008 Server Web Edition, use remote desktop, CIFS, access to the VI Client, Converter, and VMware tools where they will have high speed access to the servers. No need to install tools on every remote client that will administer the servers. Easily schedule your ghetto backups, and use the 32 bit version of WIndows which allows use of WIndows Services for Unix or Allegro to be able to present an NFS volume if necessary.

All the pieces are there for a maintainable deployment of ESXi.

[rpayton]

Kind of an old post already, but how are you guys managing these speeds 20 megabyte/sec speeds? I installed the proftpd daemon, and using Filezilla on my workstation, I'm trying to transfer a 60GB VM and I'm only getting 7.1 megabytes/sec (which is better then the 4.7 I was getting earlier, but not by much).

I tried the wget program linked earlier, but I'm wondering if u4 broke something, as the wget seg faults.

I tried using the original wget (and ftpget) but they both fail due to file size - is there a max size these stock programs can handle?

[s1xth]

Well I haven't been watching this thread to closely but I haven't tried the ftp deamon yet on u4, so I am not sure if there is any limitation with ftp and u4. I will have to try it out in my test environment.

Sent from my mobile device.

[rpayton]

Thanks for the response s1xth, I look forward to reading your results.

From everything I've been reading, I'm really starting to wish we held off on u4, especially if u3 does prove to give better ftp results.

[birnenschnitzel]

I cannot find any problems using the self compiled wget on u4. Nevertheless I took some minutes and compiled the newest version 1.11.4 for ESXi. You can download it using this link.

See you.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

I've posted the latest copy. A few notes

- I've run this on update 4 (no problems with ftp on it)

- rsync is included

- wget is v 1.11.4 ( thanks birnenschnitzel ! )

- the proftpd config file has this login tweak - http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=61

The oem.tgz download is at the first link.

http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/customize_oem_tgz.php

http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/ESXi_enable_FTP.php

[IT_Architect]

I've posted the latest copy

Your timing is perfect!

Thanks Tons!

[s1xth]

I am not to familiar with changing the OEM file, but can you do all of this on a current installed system, or do you need to do this on a fresh install? (meaning I want to use WGET and RSYNC on an already in stalled server).

[Dave_Mishchenko]

There's a download on this page - http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/customize_oem_tgz.php. It'll be fine with a fresh install if you haven't already replaced oem.tgz as part of the install process or if you're using the Dell or HP custom install image.

[ImedecsIT]

I would like to see if it is possible to use FTP to transfer backed up vm's (using the ghettoVCB.sh script) from the local disk on the ESXi server to our NFS share on our Netgear ReadyNAS appliance. What would be the best way to accomplish this? Currently we are thinking about editing the /etc/rc.local file to insert a cron job that will persist a reboot. This will run the cron on the ESXi server to do our local backups, would we then be able to leverage the FTP and/or wget instead of cp -R and rsync to increase transfer speeds? How would we go about this? Any help is greatly appreciated.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

You can edit /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root and you would have to bundle that into oem.tgz to survive a reboot. http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/customize_oem_tgz.php

Since you want to copy this to a NFS server have you thought about mounting that as a datastore and then just copying from one datastore to another. You might get better performance than going via FTP.

[ImedecsIT]

Dave,

Thanks for the quick replay, however we tried on a test box mounting the nfs share as a datastore and then using the cp -R command but the best transfer speeds we are getting is 5000-6000 KBps. We were hoping that using FTP somehow would be better. Thoughts?

[drewdown]

What kind of setup do you have? When I went that route I was seeing write speeds of up to 90Mb/s but reading was about a 3rd of that right around 30/40Mb/s.

That was using FreeNAS and 100Mb interfaces.