Best way to Backup VHD Files

[wogboy112]

Hi,

I'm looking for a way to backup the VHD files that are currently sitting on the SAN's without any downtime. we have a NAS that we need to backup to.

Is this possible?

[jbruelasdgo]

VHD files? may be those are from hyper-v

if you want to backup VMware files, the files would be VMDKs

there are plenty of options for VMware, and you could start with VMware Consolidated Backup

regards

Jose Ruelas

[thecakeisalie]

For a quick and easy online backup you can use the following KB to do a one line backup, and specify an SMB share as the destination, or VMFS, or NFS: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1002978

vcbMounter will let you backup the whole VM, not just the VMDK's; so restoring will just take a one line vcbRestore to get the VM back up if you ever need to.

[COdlk]

I would take a look at VCB for backing up your VMs. Someone already mentioned vcbMounter and vcbrestore which are VCB commands. Here is a good PDF to read http://vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/r35u2/vi3_35_25_u2_vm_backup.pdf

david

[thecakeisalie]

vcbMounter and vcbRestore can be run from the cli of any ESX classic (not ESXi) server, and don't require VCB licensing or a proxy server.

VCB is a much better enterprise solution, and would be recommended for any regular or large quantity backups, since the service console can't handle a lot of I/O and will cause a performance hit to your hosts; it's a convenient way to offload the backups from the COS.