Backing Up ESXi Config. Files

[adminatater]

Hi,

Is there a good method (if any) to backup the config files of a hypervisor automatically? Idealy what I'm looking for is a way to restore all the 'custom' changes I've made to a hypervisor in the case I have to rebuild one (disaster recovery).

[bshubinsky · Accepted solution]

You can use the esxcfg-cfgbackup.pl Perl script to do it. Check out this post for more information on how to do it from the PowerCLI.

Note: YMMV since I haven't personally done this.

http://waynes-world-it.blogspot.com/2009/08/vmware-powercli-backup-esxi-40-firmware.html

[adminatater]

Thanks, don't suppose you know if this will also backup any Virtual Switches & port groups created?

[bshubinsky]

From what I understand it does a basic backup of all of the host functions such as datastores, vSwitches, users, etc. I'm pretty sure it doesn't do VM settings and I'm pretty sure it doesn't do any advanced settings.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

You can also use Set-VMHostFirmware. When you take a system backup for ESXi it will backup configuration settings (the Configuration tab, users) but it will not backup any virtual machine data.




Dave

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[adminatater]

Thanks for the great feedback you two. I'm only looking at backing up the hypervisor config. I'm using Symantec Backup Exec 2010 to handle the actual VMs.