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porpoisehork
Contributor
Contributor

Free Backup / Cloning Solution with Scheduling for ESXi 5

Hello.

I’m fairly new to ESXi, so I pre-emptively apologize if this is a dumb question. I found only one similiar question on the forum with a single response.

I’m currently working with a small company that no IT staff and has a very simple VM setup / backup solution. They have a pair of physical file servers, each with VMware Server 1 installed. They have a single SBS 2003 VM that runs on the primary file server. Every night the virtual SBS Server shuts itself down and is copied to the backup file server. The copy is already registered on the second server – the files are just overwritten nightly. This way all they need to do if they have an issue on the primary physical server is log on to the backup server, start the VM and click the ‘I moved it’ dialog. This solution is simple enough for them to handle.

Their server hardware is getting replaced. They can choose either Windows Server 2008 or ESXi 5. I’d rather go with ESXi for them, but I need to be able to replicate their failover process so all they need to do is start the copy of their SBS server on the backup server if they have an issue with the primary server. I’m trying to find a free solution on ESXi that does this.

The solutions I’ve found so far:

Veeam Backup – the free version doesn’t support scheduling, and their download page says doesn’t the free version doesn’t support the free version of ESXi.

ghettoVCB - backs up to another datastore on the same host, not a different host. It can be scheduled, and it has experimental rsync support, but this also looks like it synchronizes with another local datastore.

ghettoClone – no longer works with the Free ESXi because of the read-only datastore changes?

Thinware vBackup – looks like the free version may support scheduled backups.

VMware Standalone Converter – has no scheduling features built in. The converter-cli seems to be able to take xml job files as an input, and may be an option.

Are any other community members using any of these tools to pre-emptively stand-up a backup copy of a VM (versus restoring at the time the VM is needed)?

Are there other/better solutions I’m missing here?

Could I simply log into the primary ESXi box and FTP/SCP the files to the secondary on a nightly basis?

Thank-you for any guidance you can provide!

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6 Replies
eysfilm
Contributor
Contributor

How's your search going with this?  I'm just starting to look for a better solution at our schools.

Veeam is awsome, but the free version doesn't support schedules.  The per server price tag is a little high with so many schools.  But in the end we might have to bite the bullet and get licenses for all our ESXi hosts at each site.

Would love to hear what others are going.

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sparrowangelste
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

for free with scedualing you probably will only find ghettovcb

--------------------- Sparrowangelstechnology : Vmware lover http://sparrowangelstechnology.blogspot.com
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porpoisehork
Contributor
Contributor

I haven't tried the Thinware product yet, or played around with trying to schedule VMWare Converter.

The Veam FastSCP product was what I really wanted to use, but the latest version (that works with VSphere 5) is wrapped into their backup product that can't be scheduled unless you pay for a license. While reasearching the older version's vSphere 5 compatability (some said it works with 5, some say it doesn't) I saw several people talking about using WinSCP and SFTP tools to do what I was looking for. However, WinSCP seemed to to work for some and not for others with the large vmdk files - which is why many posts said Veam FastSCP was created. Too bad it's no longer available Smiley Sad.

However, while reading through all the SCP and FTP threads I remembered that GoodSync (a Windows/Mac Tool) can connect to all kinds of networking sources for it's scheduled jobs, including SFTP sites, so I gave it a try and it worked for a small 5GB VM. I'm reinstalling the environment now and I plan to do more testing on larger VM's (up to 40GB) over the next few days. If not i'll try converting the VMDKs to multiple 2GB files instead - I was going to try this anyway to see if it would cut down the nightly backup traffic - I was hoping that if I defrag the drive that not all of the 2GB files would change every day.

I'll report back in a few days to confirm if the tool works or not, but I'm guessing this is probably more of a 'hack' solution than you are looking for though Smiley Happy.

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Josh26
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

The thing is that it's VMware's licensing that prohibits using the backup API on the free version.

This is the reason that originally, Veeam supplied ESXi Free backup support - then had to remove that feature.

Scripts like ghettovcb are, as the name implies, community created hacks. They work great for certain scenarios but you have to realise there's a reason there's going to be limitations.

Surely the idea of shutting a server down every night to perform a backup is an amazing legacy that should dissapear with the stone ages. This is why "SCP" based solutions really aren't appropriate.

If I understand you correctly - what you want is a DR solution more than a backup. Consider the Virtual Storage Appliance to mirror those servers across your two platforms? It's not 'free' but if you consider buying basic VMware licenses for any other solution, you're pretty much there.

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porpoisehork
Contributor
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Surely the idea of shutting a server down every night to perform a backup is an amazing legacy that should dissapear with the stone ages. This is why "SCP" based solutions really aren't appropriate.

While I would generally agree and would never do this in an enterprise (or frankly in my own home), every business doesn't necessarily have an IT budget, in-house IT knowledge or a 99.99% uptime requirement. As much as I would like to buy licensed copies of ESXi and real management tools so their environment never goes down, I have to work with what they can afford and handle from a technical perspective. They don't have a lot of money for IT - it's not core to their business. Their current computers are 10 years old (I'm not kidding), and their 'new' servers are 5 years old, but they meet their needs. They also don't have any onsite staff that can manage a server environment. However, their office is closed 8+ hours a day and they can click an icon on their desktop if their server goes down, so shutting the server down to make an exact copy works for them. It's free, there isn't a lot to go wrong and if their server goes down they are back up within 10 minutes. They are quite happy with it and it meets their needs and budget, so it seems appropriate for their situation.

If I understand you correctly - what you want is a DR solution more than a backup. Consider the Virtual Storage Appliance to mirror those servers across your two platforms? It's not 'free' but if you consider buying basic VMware licenses for any other solution, you're pretty much there.

You are absolutley correct, it's all about DR. If I ever get them to buy an essentials licence this is what I would do. However, it's not the software cost that's the primary issue for them - it's the additional knowledge they don't have and that they have to pay someone else to manage and maintain that's the issue, so they generally try to avoid anything that isn't absolutley necessary.

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jeremyb
Contributor
Contributor

Definitely take the time to look at Thinware vBackup. It does support scheduling and ESXi free and it is even better when pared with vSphere Essentials.

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