Backup Virtual Machine to External Hard Drive

[ShawnBerger]

I'm using the VMware Infrasturcture Client vs 2.5 / VMware VirtualCenter 2.5. There are two virtual machines that I would like to export to an external hard drive. Then we would keep the hard drive off sight. We would like to insure that the image of these virtual machines would remain in tack incase of a server being destroyed. How would this be done?

[Troy_Clavell]

using the VIC, you can browse the datastore, highlight the folder in question and choose download a file from this datastore to your local machine. Choose your external drive as it's destination.

Or you can use VMware Converter and your destination could be a virtual appliance saving it to your external drive.

[ShawnBerger]

I will give this a try.

[Peter_Grant]

Another way is to download a trial version of a back tool like esXpress. This will let you back up to a CIFS share in a compress .tar format. The good thing about this is it creates a self executable extraction file allowing you to restore it without the software in future just by running the correct command on your VM backup file.

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[petedr]

Thanks Peter for mentioning esXpress

Pete@esXpress

www.phdvirtual.com, makers of esXpress