How to backup VM guest inside ESXi 4.0 Free version

[dwchan]

Can anyone recommend a good way to backup a VM guests that are hosted by ESXi 4.0 free edition? I know I can enable ssh and maybe use scp, but wouldn't want to copy an entire 20G vmdk files from a virtual 20G virtual hard drive. Since this is a free ESXi version at one of my client location, vCenter is not an option ;(

[lamw]

Take a look at this 100% free scripted solution:

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:

Twitter: @lamw

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

VMware Developer Comuunity

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

[dwchan]

so it looks like a script I would run on the esxi console itself. Do I have to have a NFS share? Would samba works?

[DSTAVERT]

If you can set up samba you can set up an NFS share. An NFS share can be as simple as a single line in the /etc/exports file Once you have your share defined, restart NFS. You add the NFS share as a datastore in your ESXi host machine.

The exports file will look like the following assuming that your ESXi host had an ip address of 192.168.0.10 and your linux server had a directory /backup

>/backup 192.168.0.10(rw,no_root_squash,sync)

[dwchan]

Well, for this deployment, there are a microsoft shop. Is there any recommend nfs service for windows xp/vista one can recommend?

[Morat]

You're going to need an MS server OS for that one I'm afraid. 2003r2 or later to get the current version of NFS with replication (FRS).