Announcement: New (free) backup utility realease.

[admin]

Hello all,

I've written a backup utility, it's currently still in 'beta' but I think I've worked out most of the bugs and it's been working very well for me, so I thought I'd share my work with the community.

I'll be trying to update it fairly regularly, hot-clone of a VM or specific VMDK attached to a VM planned for next version.

Please see the readme file here for some initial instructions: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~alexm/README

You can download the utility here:

http://xtravirt.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=75&func=select&id=5

Once you've extracted the archive, please read the README file in the directory created for instructions on using the utility.

Any problems post them to this thread and I'll try and resolve them, I'll set up a proper website when I have the time.

Alex

p.s. Big thanks to acr for help with testing!

Added link to the latest release - 21st May 2007[/b]

Message was edited by:

MR-T: Updated with link to Xtravirt site

[dwightmccann]

Yes, that's just what we just discovered, sigh. We're going to inhibit the automatic Vmotions and see if the problems stop. Can you tell us if esXPress knows how to handle the issue of DRS (I think that's what it is called) or is it requried to be disabled?

Thanks,

Dwight

[tlyczko]

I don't know, but if you open an account on their website and ask, you

should get a reply pretty soon.

I would think all you need to do is figure out how not to have vmotions

occur during the backup window, since esxpress will know to backup the

vm regardless of what machine it is on...

[admin]

Yes, esXpress is fully DRS capable, it doesn't matter if VMs migrate during a backup whether it's an automatic or a manual VMotion.

Alex

www.phdvirtual.com

[roodi]

Hi Mittell

could you please see my config file and vml file to see if it is ok, please see questions in red, thank you...

1. Config file created by vi-backup.pl 1.0.1 ##

hostname=corp.net

username=root

password=xxxx

searchspec=/usr/local/vi-backup/sample.vml

exportpath=/vmfs/volumes/VCB can i point this to my LUN on the SAN or does it have to be a windows share? i recieve this message.....umount: /vmfs/volumes/VCB/: not mounted

2gbsparse=0

safemode=1

mailreport=1

mailserver=smtp.pacificlife.net

mailfrom=CorpTechVMware@pacificlife.net

mailto=adrian.mohammadi@pacificlife.com

smb=1

Sample file

#Example VM List search file for use with VISBU 1.0

#This .vml file would backup all powered on VM's excluding those starting with a 't' or 'T'.

include=corxxx is this the correct way of adding one server ont he list and excluding the rest or is there a better way? exclude=xxx, xxxxx, xxxx

[admin]

Hi Mittell

could you please see my config file and vml file to see if it is ok, please see questions in red, thank you...

1. Config file created by vi-backup.pl 1.0.1 ##

hostname=corp.net

username=root

password=xxxx

searchspec=/usr/local/vi-backup/sample.vml

exportpath=/vmfs/volumes/VCB can i point this to my LUN on the SAN or does it have to be a windows share? i recieve this message.....umount: /vmfs/volumes/VCB/: not mounted

2gbsparse=0

safemode=1

mailreport=1

mailserver=smtp.pacificlife.net

mailfrom=CorpTechVMware@pacificlife.net

mailto=adrian.mohammadi@pacificlife.com

smb=1

smb=1 tells it to try and mount and SMB share, and requires an smb share path, username and password. You're using a /vmfs so you need to have smb=0 set.

Sample file

#Example VM List search file for use with VISBU 1.0

#This .vml file would backup all powered on VM's excluding those starting with a 't' or 'T'.

include=corxxx is this the correct way of adding one server ont he list and excluding the rest or is there a better way? > exclude=xxx, xxxxx, xxxx

you can use include=ALL and then exclude the ones you don't want, or do it the way your have, both should work.

Alex

www.phdvirtual.com - the creators of esXpress backup

[cas5213]

Hey Mittel...

We've been using Visbu with great sucess for nearly a year now and love the utility. However, we recently ran into a very strange problem.

Running backup jobs on one ESX server result in No Vm's found error regardless of what we try (power state, name, vm-search.vml, etc.). Even using the Any command on the host results in "FATAL ERROR: No VM's found from specified search specification '"Any!"! Name searches are case sensitive, please check your VMs name."

Now where it ets funky... If I create a config file on ANOTHER esx host specifying the original esx host as the "target hostname", and using Any as the searchspec - Visbu finds ALL of the VM's running on the host as you would expect. However, the backups result in failure as the vmdk files are on a storage only that host has access to for the moment.

Is there any ESX setting that might result in this? Any places in the script that might result in this behavior? I've reinstalled the script twice and the host is still having the same problem. I've burned myself out of any ideas for the time being.

It is also worth noting that the output of "vmware-cmd -l" is outdated and incorrect when matched to the listings for the host in VMCenter. the output of vmware-cmd -l and VMCenter matches on all other hosts.

Any guidance appreciated beyond words.

Thank you.

[cas5213]

The issue ended up being due to the vcbvmname command visbu implements to find VM information (/usr/sbin/vcbVmName). The machine wasn't able to SSH to other servers or itself. Once SSH was enabled it could ssh out to other servers. Upon updating its hosts file to the correct IP for itself, everything was functioning normally again... including SSH back to self, listing using the /usr/sbin/vcb/VmName command, and running actual backups.

Just posting in case anyone runs into the same problem at some point!

[dwightmccann]

We have been using VISBU very successfully for several years. We recently moved to some new Dell machines with ESX 3.5 Update 5 (from Update 2) and have started getting intermittent but frequent errors of this flavor:

11/04/2010 22:30:06: /vmfs/volumes/4b9653ac-c505c015-1a73-001517bec274/waredev/waredev.vmdk skipped due to file clash.

Backup failed. There were one or more errors during disk exports.