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dtnvm
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vi3backup, any experiences yet?

Hi,

there seems to be new tool for backing up VMs similar to vmbk for ESX 2. Did anyone test it already?

From http://www.techarchsolutions.com/downloads.asp :

"Vi3Backup is a wrapper that we’ve written to put around vcb at the console level to make it easier for people to perform full machine snapshots. It’s trying to do some of the things that VMBK did within Vi3."

Jan

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kix1979
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I've tested it and it works pretty well. When I was down in OZ in November I had a chance to meet the guys that created the script and talked to them for a bit. They are continuing to enhance it, but overall it works extremely well for a free script.

Kix

Thomas H. Bryant III

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Teovmy
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Yes, Same here,

I'm bussy with it but it will not work.

this is a error message that I get:

\[2007-01-15 15:17:24.854 'App' 3076456576 info] Current working directory: /

\[2007-01-15 15:17:24.908 'BaseLibs' 2698160 warning] \[Vmdb_Unset] Unsetting unknown path: /vmomi/

\[2007-01-15 15:17:27.506 'vcbMounter' 3076456576 error] Error: Backup snapshot already exists.

\[2007-01-15 15:17:27.506 'vcbMounter' 3076456576 error] An error occured, cleaning up...

But there is no snapshot!!!

Regards. @teovmy http://www.mikes.eu
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kix1979
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I've tested it and it works pretty well. When I was down in OZ in November I had a chance to meet the guys that created the script and talked to them for a bit. They are continuing to enhance it, but overall it works extremely well for a free script.

Kix

Thomas H. Bryant III
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acr
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Looks good, vmbk is now available for VI3..

http://www.vmts.net/vmbk3.htm

admin
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I've written a new free backup utility. I've aimed to make it as user friendly as possible - i.e. menu options for email reporting config, SMB mounting, config file configuration and setting scheduled cron jobs, auto-configs your ESX firewall automaticaly, creates a perl script to restore each VM backed up etc - the idea being no command line file editting should be required to use it.

I'm looking for Beta testers please email or PM me if you're interested.

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kix1979
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Can I try? :smileygrin: I love free tools

Thomas H. Bryant III
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sbeaver
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I am game also!!

Steve Beaver
VMware Communities User Moderator
VMware vExpert 2009 - 2020
VMware NSX vExpert - 2019 - 2020
====
Co-Author of "VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center"
(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach
Come check out my blog: [www.virtualizationpractice.com/blog|http://www.virtualizationpractice.com/blog/]
Come follow me on twitter http://www.twitter.com/sbeaver

**The Cloud is a journey, not a project.**
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admin
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Of course Kix, be cool to have some tests done on other peoples kit, only so many bugs one man can find.

Fire me over an email and I'll send you a copy guys. Smiley Happy

(email addy in my profile)

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kix1979
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Brave man to have your email addy there!

Thomas H. Bryant III
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admin
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Yes vi3backup works well, I'm happy with this handy product, and have ran it via crond to.

Adrian_Saltmars
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I Just started using this and it appears to work OK (but I would like it to make a restore script).

I have only tested it using the ROOT account specified in the vi3backup.cfg file, I can't continue to use ROOT as the pwd gets changed every month so would like to use a dedicated backup account instead but I don't know what rights to give the backup account.

Does anyone know how to give the backup account the minimum rights necessary for the script to work?

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admin
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Not trying to blow my own trumpet, but my backup script creates automated restore scripts. It also doesn't use vcbMounter, so the disks are exported in formats you can use straight away without needing to use vcbRestore. Smiley Happy

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=70253&start=0&tstart=0

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Adrian_Saltmars
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Thanks - I am testing it and results are OK so far - good work!!

But as for my other question about permissions, I don't know enough about how this works to configure an account with the minimum rights necessary to complete the backups.

Could you advise?

TIA

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admin
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Unfortuantely my script needs to be run as root as it uses vmware-cmd, which can only be run as root.

If you wanted to write your own script that could be run as another users you'd need to use exclusively vcbVmName, vcbSnapshot, and vcbMounter - you could then add a user with VM administrator rights to your VC server and use those credentials to connect to VC rather than administrator.....however, I think you'd still need to run the script as root if you wanted to do it from the service console.

It's not much of a security risk running from the service console as root, just setup a cron job, you won't need to login as root again except to make changes to the schedule/backup search spec.

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Adrian_Saltmars
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The issue I have is that the root pwd is stored in a plain text file, although I accept that someone would have to be on the server in the first place to get it and the risk is low - I'm not sure that the Trust domain people would be impressed Smiley Happy

The main issue is that due to TD rules the root password must be changed every month, therefore the config file needs to be changed and there are lots of hosts which makes this a chore!

Thanks for the explanation - I can now work out how to procede.

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admin
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Yes it is stored in plain text, but VMware do the same with backuptools.conf, and the file permissions are set so that only root can read the file - meaning that if you could read it, you'd already have the root credentials anyway.

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