Best way to Backup a VM

[jperlewitz]

Hello,

I have a VM with a 30 GB C:/ disk and a 1.5 TB Data disk.  I have my data backed yo to an external device using a script.  I am concerned about backing up the 30 GB drive in case my VM crashes.  If it crashes or gets corrupted I want to be ablt to create a new VM quick and restore the VM.  What is the best way to do this.  Also, I do not want to backup the complete 30 GB file since only half of it is currently being used.  I currently have a snapshot but that is good for restoring my current VM to a previous state.

[TheITHollow]

If you're only concerned about the 30Gb drive I would suggest VMware Data Recovery which is free for download.  You can backup VMs to another datastore but it's suggested that the datastore not be larger than 500Gb so it might not be a good fit for your secondary drive.  But as I understand it, you've got that covered.

check it out.  It's easy to install and setup.http://www.vmware.com/products/data-recovery/overview.html

[abirhasan]

Please have a look this KB..

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=101362...

abirhasan 

[Nikhil_Patwa]

Hi,

Do you frequently update your 30GB drive if not then I suggest you make a copy of it in your datastore amd mark it as master copy, thus whenever there is any VM corruption you can easily make a copy out of your master VM.

Always make copies of VM that has minimum changes to be done that way deployment time is reduced.

There are many applications to be used for VM backup that you need to deploy in your infrastructure.

Figure out how many times you need to backup your VMs, if regularly then opt for applications that does this job otherwise if it's one off then just do manually thereby saving some cost of deploying addintional application as well as managing it.

Hope this information is useful

Nikhil

[tejaaus]

Even I will suggest to go for VMware Data Recovery.

http://mytricks.in/2011/09/guide-vmware-data-recovery-without.html

[admin]

Hi jperlewitz

Welcome to the communites.

Turn off VMware. click Alt-M to bring up your snapshot window.

Select Clone and follow the instruction. (make sure to chose the Standalone option and supply the folder in which you want to put the new copy).

Note this feature is grayed out if you have LIVE snapshot.

LIVE snapshots are snapshots you took while VM was running.

You'll have to delete all of them to use the Clone feature. Next time before you take a snapshot, power-off VM

"Life is never easy for those who dream"

[rickardnobel]

abirhasan wrote:

Please have a look this KB..

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=101362...

Abirhasan, the link is for VMware Fusion, this is the ESXi 5.0 forum.

Aarav wrote:

Turn off VMware. click Alt-M to bring up your snapshot window.

Aarav: turning off VMware? On ESXi this is obviously not possible.