Easy, cheap backup for vSphere

[jhoge]

I'm considering upgrading from VMWare Server 2.0 to VSphere for a single server with 7 VMs on it. The biggest sticking point is the backup. Right now, I'm just suspending each VM at night with a script and backing up the files with NTBackup. None of these VMs are used at night, so the downtime at night is no big deal. It's free, reliable and easy.

None of the backup solutions I've investigated for VSphere are cheap or easy to use. Acronis quoted me $3000 for their backup system, which is a monster of complexity.

All I want to do is suspend the VMs and copy the files to an external HD or network location. Should be easy, right? If there was only a way to right-click on a VM instance and say "copy this every night at 2am to
server\backupshare" If I could do that, I'd be a customer today.

John

[GeoPassantino]

So, just a standalone server? No shared storage? The VMware Essentials kit is $611. That gives you VCB, which would allow you to back up the hardware while it's hot with a 3rd party backup.

We have Essentials Plus kit, and I use VMware Data Recovery. Works awesome, easy to use, dedupes to disk. I don't need to push it to tape, and restores are simple. The downside, it's $5K.

[jhoge]

VMware Consolidated Backup doesn't seem to work with NTBackup, or have the ability to backup to a network share without additional third party software. It's a bit confusing to have a product called "VMware Consolidated Backup" that doesn't seem to actually do the backup without third party software. I guess it's really just an interface between VSphere and other third party software. Am I missing something?

[GeoPassantino]

Now that you mention it, no you aren't. It's been quite some time since I touched VCB. We bought Arcserve 15, which VCB/VDDK works with. I did some tests with it, but I wasn't thrilled with the performance of it. It would snapshot the VM, copy the VM locally, THEN back it up to disk. It was odd.

Since they actually bought the Essential Plus kit, I've worked pretty heavily with VDR. I've looked at the various licensing, and it seems like you could do a ESX Standard license, and get VDR as an add-on. That would be your cheapest route. You wouldn't need any tape backup software; and VDR will write to local disk, or a CIFS share.

Hope that helps...

Also, here is the PDF of their licensing/pricing: