Hi,
Our company purchased VMware's Consolidated Backup.
We have our own disaster recovery process and I am trying to automate the backup of our servers using the vcb software.
My first thought was to create a simple batch file for a proof of concept and then mechanize the process.
I setup a simple Windows XP VM to use as a test proxy to the ESX server.
I keep looking at all the vcp commands but they don't seem to work together.
I can't pass the result of vcpSnapshot to vcpExport.
While learning new programming languages can be fun, I just don't have the time or energy at this point in time.
We have moved away from tape and the commercial backup software leaves a lot to be desired.
I don't want to drop in a slow, huge, runtime environment like .Net or any of the other interpreters on to my servers to do my backups.
I would like an API that I can hook into with Delphi or C not C#.
Delphi is a fast easy to use developer tool. I use Delphi 7 because it just works and it is extremely fast for these types of projects.
Is there an API???
If there isn't an API to use then is there a way to do the following.
Maybe it is possible but I haven't seem it but It would be nice if I could use a static snapshot id that I could script into vcbExport.
It would be nice if I could just do something like the example below.
vcbSnapshot -user "sam" -password "xxxx" -snapshot "BackupSnapshot" -sourcefolder "111.111.111.111/vms/SQL2008Server"
vcbExport -user "sam" -password "xxxx" -snapshot "BackupSnapshot" -sourcefolder "111.111.111.111/vms/SQL2008Server" -destinationfolder "C:\Vms\SQL2008\"
vcbSnapshot -user "sam" -password "xxxx" -snapshot "BackupSnapshot" -remove
I doubt that VMware is going to modify these commands so, how about the location to that API to do consolidated backups?
Thanks in Advance,
Ray
Hello,
I would contact VMware and open up a feature request for a VCB API. The forums do not always work for that, however you calling your Sales or Support Rep directly will get your request into the system.
Actually, all you need to call is 'vcbMounter' to make a backup including creation of snapshots. Nothing else is necessary.
Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky
VMware Communities User Moderator
====
Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.
Blue Gears and SearchVMware Pro Blogs: http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Blog_Roll
Top Virtualization Security Links: http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Top_Virtualization_Security_Links
Hi,
I had partial success but my hard drive ran out of space.
Now when I try vcbMounter with the following information:
vcbMounter -h "111.111.111.111" -u "user" -p "password" -m nbd -U name:"Server2008" -r "E:\Backups\Server2008"
or
vcbMounter -h "111.111.111.111" -u "user" -p "password" -m nbd -U name:"Server2008" -r "E:\Backups\Server2008" -M 1
I get an error:
Could not read unmount information.
The message is always the same but the error numbers are different.
1376, 1320, 1852 and 1416.
I searched your site but couldn't find much on the error. I searched using vcbMounter 1376 error.
I also searched google but didn't find much there either.
I also searched and read the PDF "Virtual Machine Backup Guide".
The VM is stopped.
I tried removing any snapshots.
I also tried starting the VM and running the command.
It would be nice if there were a document with the error numbers with the cause and/or possible solutions.
Ray
Hello,
From where are you running vcbMounter? from within your Delphi script? From a VCB Proxy? From the CLI?
I would try dropping all the quotes from a CMD.EXE window on the system where VCB was installed. I hope this is a Win2003 system?
Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky
VMware Communities User Moderator
====
Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.
Blue Gears and SearchVMware Pro Blogs: http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Blog_Roll
Top Virtualization Security Links: http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Top_Virtualization_Security_Links
Hi,
I thought I would update this thread since others may have a similar problem.
The answer is to use option "a" and not "U".
The instructions say that option "U" will automatically unmount the VM. It made sense to let vcbMounter unmount the VM for me.
Using option "a" creates the backup and mounts it.
vcbMounter -h "111.111.111.111" -u "user" -p "password" -m nbd -a name:"Server2008" -r "E:\Backups\Server2008"
I will need to figure out what the intent for mount/unmount is?
I just wanted to make a backup of the VMs from my backup server.
Now I should be able to write a program to automate the process of backing up our servers to a verity of different locations.
I needed a program to encrypt the passwords and anything else someone may stumble across.
I may try to turn this into a service but I hate to write a service that is dependant on an external "exe".
The bad thing is that calling shellexecute from my program isn't going to allow me to view the results of the run.
I'll figure out something?
Thanks for the help.
Ray Browning
Hi,
This is a simple proof of concept before any real work begins.
I am running Windows XP inside a VM with the 30 eval of Consolidated Backup pulling from our real server.
(We have real copies of everything but I didn't want any licensing issues for my testing.)
All the commands are running from the command like.
The OS shouldn't matter as long as it is Windows.
That is the whole idea of DR is to make everything so that it doesn't matter.
My worst case is to bring up core business servers on any piece of hardware available. You don't always have the luxury or a hot or warm or any server.
I was reluctant to go to ESX because there were too many variables I couldn't put together in an emergency but we needed to for performance reasons.
Next I need to try to convert the ESX VM and bring it up in a Workstation version of VMware.
Thanks!
Ray Browning