How to copy files from and to ESX?

[TheKingNL]

Hi,

We have a 3.0 ESX running with 10 VM's. I want to upgrade an application so I want to make a full backup to my local disk in case the upgrade of the application fails. (From two of the 10 VM's.)

What is the fastest way I can move a VM to my local disk? I'm doing it with WinScp now but it's really slow. (Around 2Mbps) Why is it moving so slow?

We currently only have one NIC connected, so for VM's and for Service Console. Will ESX slow my copy down due to this? Will the speed increase when I configure a second NIC for Service Console only?

Are there any other tools that can move my VM's faster?

Thanks!

Message was edited by:

TheKingNL

[pengo]

why don't you just create a snapshot before the upgrade of the application, and if the upgrade dosen't work just revert to snapshot?

[VirtualNoitall]

Hello,

Snapshot are the way to go. You can also have a look at fastSCP. I have downloaded this myself but haven't looked at it yet: http://www.veeam.com/veeam_fast_scp.asp

The speed issue has to do with VMFS and copying files to/from it from other filesystems. This is not a network issue. We also purchased battery backed write cache which helped out a lot.

[navaneedak]

Hi,

Pls try Veeam .com.. Use this to copy from and to the ESX Server.

[Mikael_Tissandi]

why don't you take a snapshot, then make you changes insight your VM, if the changes are acceptable then apply the snap if not you can return back to the original disk.

Regards

[jasonboche]

As suggested by others, snapshot would be a good option here.

Also, it is cases like this that I like to create a large ext3 partition on the host for temporary storage of .vmdk files. Of course, you could also offload the .vmdk file(s) to a different vmfs volume if you have space elsewhere.

[adolopo]

While I agree with everyone else (above), if you want a backup you can also do a:

vmkfstools -i

It's way faster than doing a "cp"

[pdidy]

can't he use Converter? That way he can make a copy to the local disk. But I must ask how big are your local disk that you can backup 10 Vms? I use 2 72GB mirrored for local and have at least 4 TB's split into 4 luns for the datastores.

[Chris_S_UK]

Fast SCP is a great tool, it's miles faster than WinSCP. I use it all the time.

Chris