VM backups on ESX 3.5

[branceman]

I'm new to ESX environments. I need to find a good step by step guide for implementing a solution for backing up my VMs inside of ESX 3.5 using VCB.

This environment has local disks only. Does anyone have some suggestions or a proceedure they have implemented ?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

B

[Rumple]

you cannot use VCB with local disks as the disks have to be presented to a Windows host (zoned).

The best options for backups are the free scripts, esXpress, and vRanger.

For your purposes, as it appears you are going to be backing up the data to another external host (linux or windows), then either Ranger or esXpress will provide the same functionality (ie, they backup your VM's over the network to an ftp site or share.)

I encourage you to check out both products and go with whichever suits your fancy.

To everyone else, for the sake of branceman, lets try to not turn this into a esXpress vs Ranger pissing match 🐵

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Check out http://vmprofessional.com/index.php?content=esx3backups for information on the various backup tools. It should be updated with new information later this week.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

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Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education. CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354, As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization