ghettoVCB.sh - Free alternative for backing up VM's for ESX(i) 3.5, 4.x, 5.x, 6.x & 7.x

ghettoVCB.sh - Free alternative for backing up VM's for ESX(i) 3.5, 4.x, 5.x, 6.x & 7.x

Table of Contents:

    • Description
    • Features
    • Requirements
    • Setup
    • Configurations
    • Usage
    • Sample Execution   
      • Dry run Mode
      • Debug backup Mode
      • Backup VMs stored in a list
      • Backup All VMs residing on specific ESX(i) host
      • Backup All VMs residing on specific ESX(i) host and exclude the VMs in the exclusion list
      • Backup VMs using individual backup policies
    • Enable compression for backups
    • Email Backup Logs
    • Restore backups (ghettoVCB-restore.sh)
    • Cronjob FAQ
    • Stopping ghettoVCB Process
    • FAQ
    • Our NFS Server Configuration
    • Useful Links
    • Change Log

 

Description:


This script performs backups of virtual machines residing on ESX(i) 3.5/4.x/5.x/6.x/7.x servers using methodology similar to VMware's VCB tool. The script takes snapshots of live running virtual machines, backs up the  master VMDK(s) and then upon completion, deletes the snapshot until the next backup. The only caveat is that it utilizes resources available to the Service Console of the ESX server or Busybox Console (Tech Support Mode) of the ESXi server  running the backups as opposed to following the traditional method of offloading virtual machine backups through a VCB proxy.

This script has been tested on ESX 3.5/4.x/5.x and ESXi 3.5/4.x/5.x/6.x/7.x and supports the following backup mediums: LOCAL STORAGE, SAN and NFS. The script is non-interactive and can be setup to run via cron. Currently, this script accepts a text file that lists the display names of virtual machine(s) that are to be backed up. Additionally, one can specify a folder containing configuration files on a per VM basis for  granular control over backup policies.

Additionally, for ESX(i) environments that don't have persistent NFS datastores designated for backups, the script offers the ability to automatically connect the ESX(i) server to a NFS exported folder and then upon backup completion, disconnect it from the ESX(i) server. The connection is established by creating an NFS datastore link which enables monolithic (or thick) VMDK backups as opposed to using the usual  *nix mount command which necessitates breaking VMDK files into the 2gbsparse format for backup. Enabling this mode is self-explanatory and will evidently be so when editing the script (Note: VM_BACKUP_VOLUME variable is ignored if ENABLE_NON_PERSISTENT_NFS=1 ).

In its current configuration, the script will allow up to 3 unique backups of the Virtual Machine before it will overwrite the previous backups; this however, can be modified to fit procedures if need be. Please be diligent in running the script in a test or staging environment before using it on production live Virtual Machines; this script functions well within our environment but there is a chance that  it may not fit well into other environments.

 

If you have any questions, you may post in the dedicated ghettoVCB VMTN community group.

 

If you have found this script to be useful and would like to contribute back, please click here to donate.

 

Please read ALL documentation + FAQ's before posting a question about an issue or problem. Thank You

Features

  • Online back up of VM(s)
  • Support for multiple VMDK disk(s) backup per VM
  • Only valid VMDK(s) presented to the VM will be backed up
  • Ability to shutdown guestOS and initiate backup process and power on VM afterwards with the option of hard power timeout
  • Allow spaces in VM(s) backup list (not recommended and not a best practice)
  • Ensure that snapshot removal process completes prior to to continuing onto the next VM backup
  • VM(s) that intially contain snapshots will not be backed up and will be ignored
  • Ability to specify the number of backup rotations for VM
  • Output back up VMDK(s) in either ZEROEDTHICK (default behavior) or 2GB SPARSE or THIN or EAGERZEROEDTHICK format
  • Support for both SCSI and IDE disks
  • Non-persistent NFS backup
  • Fully support VMDK(s) stored across multiple datastores
  • Ability to compress backups (Experimental Support - Please refer to FAQ #25)
  • Ability to configure individual VM backup policies
  • Ability to include/exclude specific VMDK(s) per VM (requires individual VM backup policy setup)
  • Ability to configure logging output to file
  • Independent disk awareness (will ignore VMDK)
  • New timeout variables for shutdown and snapshot creations
  • Ability to configure snapshots with both memory and/or quiesce options
  • Ability to configure disk adapter format
  • Additional debugging information including dry run execution
  • Support for VMs with both virtual/physical RDM (pRDM will be ignored and not backed up)
  • Support for global ghettoVCB configuration file
  • Support for VM exclusion list
  • Ability to backup all VMs residing on a specific host w/o specifying VM list
  • Implemented simple locking mechenism to ensure only 1 instance of ghettoVCB is running per host
  • Updated backup directory structure - rsync friendly
  • Additional logging and final status output
  • Logging of ghettoVCB PID (proces id)
  • Email backup logs (Experimental Suppport)
  • Rsync "Link" Support (Experimental Suppport)
  • Enhanced "dryrun" details including configuration and/or VMDK(s) issues
  • New storage debugging details pre/post backup
  • Quick email status summary
  • Updated ghettoVCB documentation
  • ghettoVCB available via github
  • Support for ESXi 5.1 NEW!
  • Support for individual VM backup via command-line NEW!
  • Support VM(s) with existing snapshots NEW!
  • Support mulitple running instances of ghettoVCB NEW!
    (Experimental Suppport)
  • Configure VM shutdown/startup order NEW!
  • Support changing custom VM name during restore NEW! 

 


 

Requirements:

  • VMs running on ESX(i) 3.5/4.x+/5.x
  • SSH console access to ESX(i) host

 


 

Setup:


1) Download ghettoVCB from github by clicking on the ZIP button at the top and upload to either your ESX or ESXi system (use scp or WinSCP to transfer the file)



2) Extract the contents of the zip file (filename will vary):

# unzip ghettoVCB-master.zip

Archive:  ghettoVCB-master.zip
   creating: ghettoVCB-master/
  inflating: ghettoVCB-master/README
  inflating: ghettoVCB-master/ghettoVCB-restore.sh
  inflating: ghettoVCB-master/ghettoVCB-restore_vm_restore_configuration_template
  inflating: ghettoVCB-master/ghettoVCB-vm_backup_configuration_template
  inflating: ghettoVCB-master/ghettoVCB.conf
  inflating: ghettoVCB-master/ghettoVCB.sh



3) The script is now ready to be used and is located in a directory named ghettoVCB-master

# ls -l

-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           281 Jan  6 03:58 README
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         16024 Jan  6 03:58 ghettoVCB-restore.sh
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           309 Jan  6 03:58 ghettoVCB-restore_vm_restore_configuration_template
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           356 Jan  6 03:58 ghettoVCB-vm_backup_configuration_template
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           631 Jan  6 03:58 ghettoVCB.conf
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root         49375 Jan  6 03:58 ghettoVCB.sh

4) Before using the scripts, you will need to enable the execute permission  on both ghettoVCB.sh and ghettoVCB-restore.sh by running the following:

chmod +x ghettoVCB.shchmod +x ghettoVCB-restore.sh

 


 

Configurations:


The following variables need to be defined within the script or in VM backup policy prior to execution.

Defining the backup datastore and folder in which the backups are stored (if folder does not exist, it will automatically be created):

VM_BACKUP_VOLUME=/vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/WILLIAM_BACKUPS



Defining the backup disk format (zeroedthick, eagerzeroedthick, thin, and 2gbsparse are available):

DISK_BACKUP_FORMAT=thin

Note: If you are using the 2gbsparse on an ESXi 5.1 host, backups may fail. Please download the latest version of the ghettoVCB script which automatically resolves this or take a look at this article for the details.

Defining the backup rotation per VM:

VM_BACKUP_ROTATION_COUNT=3



Defining whether the VM is powered down or not prior to backup (1 = enable, 0 = disable):

Note: VM(s) that are powered off will not require snapshoting

POWER_VM_DOWN_BEFORE_BACKUP=0



Defining whether the VM can be hard powered off when  "POWER_VM_DOWN_BEFORE_BACKUP" is enabled and VM does not have VMware  Tools installed

ENABLE_HARD_POWER_OFF=0



If "ENABLE_HARD_POWER_OFF" is enabled, then this defines the number  of (60sec) iterations the script will before executing a hard power off  when:

ITER_TO_WAIT_SHUTDOWN=3



The number (60sec) iterations the script will wait when powering off  the VM and will give up and ignore the particular VM for backup:

POWER_DOWN_TIMEOUT=5



The number (60sec) iterations the script will wait when taking a  snapshot of a VM and will give up and ignore the particular VM for  backup:

Note: Default value should suffice

SNAPSHOT_TIMEOUT=15



Defining whether or not to enable compression (1 = enable, 0 = disable):

ENABLE_COMPRESSION=0



NOTE: With ESXi 3.x/4.x/5.x, there is a limitation of the maximum size of a VM for compression within the unsupported Busybox Console which should not affect backups running classic ESX 3.x,4.x or 5.x. On ESXi 3.x the largest supported VM is 4GB for compression and on ESXi 4.x the largest  supported VM is 8GB. If you try to compress a larger VM, you may run into issues when trying to extract upon a restore. PLEASE TEST THE RESTORE PROCESS BEFORE MOVING TO PRODUCTION SYSTEMS!

Defining the adapter type for backed up VMDK (DEPERCATED - NO LONGER NEEDED😞

ADAPTER_FORMAT=buslogic



Defining whether virtual machine memory is snapped and if quiescing is enabled (1 = enable, 0 = disable):

Note: By default both are disabled

VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY=0
VM_SNAPSHOT_QUIESCE=0



NOTE: VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY is only used to ensure when the snapshot is taken, it's memory contents  are also captured. This is only relevant to the actual snapshot and it's  not used in any shape/way/form in regards to the backup. All backups  taken whether your VM is running or offline will result in an offline VM  backup when you restore. This was originally added for debugging  purposes and in generally should be left disabled

Defining VMDK(s) to backup from a particular VM either a list of vmdks or "all"

VMDK_FILES_TO_BACKUP="myvmdk.vmdk"

 

Defining whether or not VM(s) with existing snapshots can be backed up. This flag means it will CONSOLIDATE ALL EXISTING SNAPSHOTS for a VM prior to starting the backup (1 = yes, 0 = no):

ALLOW_VMS_WITH_SNAPSHOTS_TO_BE_BACKEDUP=0

 

Defining the order of which VM(s) should be shutdown first, especially if there is a dependency between multiple VM(s). This should be a comma seperate list of VM(s)

VM_SHUTDOWN_ORDER=vm1,vm2,vm3

 

Defining the order of VM(s) that should be started up first after backups have completed, especially if there is a dependency between multiple VM(s). This should be a comma seperate list of VM(s)

VM_STARTUP_ORDER=vm3,vm2,vm1

 

 

Defining NON-PERSISTENT NFS Backup Volume (1 = yes, 0 = no):

ENABLE_NON_PERSISTENT_NFS=0

NOTE: This is meant for environments that do not want a persisted connection to their NFS backup volume and allows the NFS volume to only be mounted during backups. The script expects the following 5 variables to be defined if this is to be used: UNMOUNT_NFS, NFS_SERVER, NFS_MOUNT, NFS_LOCAL_NAME and NFS_VM_BACKUP_DIR

 

Defining whether or not to unmount the NFS backup volume (1 = yes, 0 = no):

UNMOUNT_NFS=0

Defining the NFS server address (IP/hostname):

NFS_SERVER=172.51.0.192

Defining the NFS export path:

NFS_MOUNT=/upload

Defining the NFS datastore name:

NFS_LOCAL_NAME=backup

Defining the NFS backup directory for VMs:

NFS_VM_BACKUP_DIR=mybackups

 

NOTE: Only supported if you are running vSphere 4.1 and this feature is experimental. If you are having issues with sending mail, please take a look at Email Backup Log section

Defining whether or not to email backup logs (1 = yes, 0 = no):

EMAIL_LOG=1



Defining whether or not to email message will be deleted off the host  whether it is successful in sending, this is used for debugging  purposes. (1 = yes, 0 = no):

EMAIL_DEBUG=1



Defining email server:

EMAIL_SERVER=auroa.primp-industries.com



Defining email server port:

EMAIL_SERVER_PORT=25

 

Defining email delay interval (useful if you have slow SMTP server and would like to include a delay in netcat using -i param, default is 1second):

EMAIL_DELAY_INTERVAL=1


Defining recipient of the email:

EMAIL_TO=auroa@primp-industries.com



Defining from user which may require specific domain entry depending on email server configurations:

EMAIL_FROM=root@ghettoVCB

 

Defining to support RSYNC symbolic link creation (1 = yes, 0 = no):

RSYNC_LINK=0

 

Note: This  enables an automatic creation of a generic symbolic link (both a  relative & absolution path) in which users can refer to run  replication backups using rsync from a remote host. This does not  actually support rsync backups with ghettoVCB. Please take a look at the  Rsync Section of the documentation for more details.

 

  • A sample global ghettoVCB configuration file is included with the download called ghettoVCB.conf.  It contains the same variables as defined from above and allows a user  to customize and define multiple global configurations based on a user's  environment.

 


# cat ghettoVCB.conf
VM_BACKUP_VOLUME=/vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/WILLIAM_BACKUPS
DISK_BACKUP_FORMAT=thin
VM_BACKUP_ROTATION_COUNT=3
POWER_VM_DOWN_BEFORE_BACKUP=0
ENABLE_HARD_POWER_OFF=0
ITER_TO_WAIT_SHUTDOWN=3
POWER_DOWN_TIMEOUT=5
ENABLE_COMPRESSION=0
VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY=0
VM_SNAPSHOT_QUIESCE=0
ALLOW_VMS_WITH_SNAPSHOTS_TO_BE_BACKEDUP=0
ENABLE_NON_PERSISTENT_NFS=0
UNMOUNT_NFS=0
NFS_SERVER=172.30.0.195
NFS_MOUNT=/nfsshare
NFS_LOCAL_NAME=nfs_storage_backup
NFS_VM_BACKUP_DIR=mybackups
SNAPSHOT_TIMEOUT=15
EMAIL_LOG=0
EMAIL_SERVER=auroa.primp-industries.com
EMAIL_SERVER_PORT=25
EMAIL_DELAY_INTERVAL=1
EMAIL_TO=auroa@primp-industries.com
EMAIL_FROM=root@ghettoVCB
WORKDIR_DEBUG=0
VM_SHUTDOWN_ORDER=
VM_STARTUP_ORDER=


To override any existing configurations within the ghettoVCB.sh script  and to use a global configuration file, user just needs to specify the  new flag -g and path to global configuration file (For an example,  please refer to the sample execution section of the documenation)

 

Running multiple instances of ghettoVCB is now supported with the latest release by specifying the working directory (-w) flag.

By default, the working directory of the ghettoVCB instance is /tmp/ghettoVCB.work and you can run another instance by providing an alternate working directory. You should try to minimize the number of ghettoVCB instances running on your ESXi host as it does consume some amount of resources when running in the ESXi Shell. This is considered an experimental feature, so please test in a development environment to ensure everything is working prior to moving to production system.

 

Ensure that you do not edit past this section:

########################## DO NOT MODIFY PAST THIS LINE ##########################



 


 

Usage:


# ./ghettoVCB.sh
###############################################################################
#
# ghettoVCB for ESX/ESXi 3.5, 4.x+ and 5.x
# Author: William Lam
# http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/
# Documentation: http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-8760
# Created: 11/17/2008
# Last modified: 2012_12_17 Version 0
#
###############################################################################

Usage: ghettoVCB.sh [options]

OPTIONS:
   -a     Backup all VMs on host
   -f     List of VMs to backup
   -m     Name of VM to backup (overrides -f)
   -c     VM configuration directory for VM backups
   -g     Path to global ghettoVCB configuration file
   -l     File to output logging
   -w     ghettoVCB work directory (default: )
   -d     Debug level [info|debug|dryrun] (default: info)

(e.g.)

Backup VMs stored in a list
    ./ghettoVCB.sh -f vms_to_backup

Backup a single VM
    ./ghettoVCB.sh -m vm_to_backup

Backup all VMs residing on this host
    ./ghettoVCB.sh -a

Backup all VMs residing on this host except for the VMs in the exclusion list
    ./ghettoVCB.sh -a -e vm_exclusion_list

Backup VMs based on specific configuration located in directory
    ./ghettoVCB.sh -f vms_to_backup -c vm_backup_configs

Backup VMs using global ghettoVCB configuration file
    ./ghettoVCB.sh -f vms_to_backup -g /global/ghettoVCB.conf

Output will log to /tmp/ghettoVCB.log (consider logging to local or remote datastore to persist logs)
    ./ghettoVCB.sh -f vms_to_backup -l /vmfs/volume/local-storage/ghettoVCB.log

Dry run (no backup will take place)
    ./ghettoVCB.sh -f vms_to_backup -d dryrun



The input to this script is a file that contains the display name of the  virtual machine(s) separated by a newline. When creating this file on a  non-Linux/UNIX system, you may introduce ^M character which can cause  the script to miss-behave. To ensure this does not occur, plesae create  the file on the ESX/ESXi host.

Here is a sample of what the file would look like:

[root@himalaya ~]# cat vms_to_backup
vCOPS
vMA
vCloudConnector



 


 

Sample Execution:

  • Dry run Mode
  • Debug Mode

  • Backup VMs stored in a list
  • Backup Single VM using command-line
  • Backup All VMs residing on specific ESX(i) host
  • Backup VMs based on individual VM backup policies

 

Dry run Mode (no backup will take place)

Note: This execution mode provides a qucik summary of details on whether a given set of VM(s)/VMDK(s) will be backed up. It provides additional information such as VMs that may have snapshots, VMDK(s) that are configured as independent disks, or other issues that may cause a VM or VMDK to not backed up.

 

  • Log verbosity: dryrun
  • Log output: stdout & /tmp (default) 
    • Logs by default will be stored in /tmp, these log files may not persist through reboots, especially when dealing with ESXi. You should log to either a local or remote datastore to ensure that logs are kept upon a reboot.
[root@himalaya ghettoVCB]# ./ghettoVCB.sh -f vms_to_backup -d dryrun
Logging output to "/tmp/ghettoVCB-2011-03-13_15-19-57.log" ...
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- info: ============================== ghettoVCB LOG START ==============================

2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- info: CONFIG - VERSION = 2011_03_13_1
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- info: CONFIG - GHETTOVCB_PID = 30157
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_VOLUME = /vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/WILLIAM_BACKUPS
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_ROTATION_COUNT = 3
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_DIR_NAMING_CONVENTION = 2011-03-13_15-19-57
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- info: CONFIG - DISK_BACKUP_FORMAT = thin
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- info: CONFIG - POWER_VM_DOWN_BEFORE_BACKUP = 0
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- info: CONFIG - ENABLE_HARD_POWER_OFF = 0
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- info: CONFIG - ITER_TO_WAIT_SHUTDOWN = 3
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- info: CONFIG - POWER_DOWN_TIMEOUT = 5
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- info: CONFIG - SNAPSHOT_TIMEOUT = 15
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- info: CONFIG - LOG_LEVEL = dryrun
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- info: CONFIG - BACKUP_LOG_OUTPUT = /tmp/ghettoVCB-2011-03-13_15-19-57.log
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- info: CONFIG - VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY = 0
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- info: CONFIG - VM_SNAPSHOT_QUIESCE = 0
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- info: CONFIG - VMDK_FILES_TO_BACKUP = all
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- info: CONFIG - EMAIL_LOG = 0
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- info:
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- dryrun: ###############################################
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- dryrun: Virtual Machine: scofield
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- dryrun: VM_ID: 704
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- dryrun: VMX_PATH: /vmfs/volumes/himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage/scofield/scofield.vmx
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- dryrun: VMX_DIR: /vmfs/volumes/himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage/scofield
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- dryrun: VMX_CONF: scofield/scofield.vmx
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- dryrun: VMFS_VOLUME: himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage
2011-03-13 15:19:57 -- dryrun: VMDK(s):
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun:  scofield_3.vmdk 3 GB
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun:  scofield_2.vmdk 2 GB
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun:  scofield_1.vmdk 1 GB
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun:  scofield.vmdk   5 GB
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun: INDEPENDENT VMDK(s):
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun: TOTAL_VM_SIZE_TO_BACKUP: 11 GB
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun: ###############################################

2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun: ###############################################
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun: Virtual Machine: vMA
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun: VM_ID: 1440
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun: VMX_PATH: /vmfs/volumes/himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage/vMA/vMA.vmx
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun: VMX_DIR: /vmfs/volumes/himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage/vMA
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun: VMX_CONF: vMA/vMA.vmx
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun: VMFS_VOLUME: himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun: VMDK(s):
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun:  vMA-000002.vmdk 5 GB
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun: INDEPENDENT VMDK(s):
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun: TOTAL_VM_SIZE_TO_BACKUP: 5 GB
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun: Snapshots found for this VM, please commit all snapshots before continuing!
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun: THIS VIRTUAL MACHINE WILL NOT BE BACKED UP DUE TO EXISTING SNAPSHOTS!
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun: ###############################################

2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun: ###############################################
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun: Virtual Machine: vCloudConnector
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun: VM_ID: 2064
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun: VMX_PATH: /vmfs/volumes/himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage/vCloudConnector/vCloudConnector.vmx
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun: VMX_DIR: /vmfs/volumes/himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage/vCloudConnector
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun: VMX_CONF: vCloudConnector/vCloudConnector.vmx
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun: VMFS_VOLUME: himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage
2011-03-13 15:19:58 -- dryrun: VMDK(s):
2011-03-13 15:19:59 -- dryrun:  vCloudConnector.vmdk    3 GB
2011-03-13 15:19:59 -- dryrun: INDEPENDENT VMDK(s):
2011-03-13 15:19:59 -- dryrun:  vCloudConnector_1.vmdk  40 GB
2011-03-13 15:19:59 -- dryrun: TOTAL_VM_SIZE_TO_BACKUP: 3 GB
2011-03-13 15:19:59 -- dryrun: Snapshots can not be taken for indepdenent disks!
2011-03-13 15:19:59 -- dryrun: THIS VIRTUAL MACHINE WILL NOT HAVE ALL ITS VMDKS BACKED UP!
2011-03-13 15:19:59 -- dryrun: ###############################################

2011-03-13 15:19:59 -- info: ###### Final status: OK, only a dryrun. ######

2011-03-13 15:19:59 -- info: ============================== ghettoVCB LOG END ================================

In the example above, we have 3 VMs to be backed up:

  • scofield has 4 VMDK(s) that total up to 11GB and does not contain any snapshots/independent disks and this VM should backup without any issues
  • vMA has 1 VMDK but it also contains a snapshot and clearly this VM will not be backed up until the snapshot has been committed
  • vCloudConnector has 2 VMDK(s), one which is 3GB and another which is 40GB and configured as an independent disk. Since snapshots do not affect independent disk, only the 3GB VMDK will be backed up for this VM as denoted by the "TOTAL_VM_SIZE_TO_BACKUP"

Debug backup mode

Note: This execution modes provides more in-depth information about environment/backup process including additional storage debugging information which provides information about both the source/destination datastore pre and post backups. This can be very useful in troubleshooting backups

 

  • Log verbosity: debug
  • Log output: stdout & /tmp (default) 
    • Logs by default will be stored in /tmp, these log files may not persist  through reboots, especially when dealing with ESXi. You should log to  either a local or remote datastore to ensure that logs are kept upon a  reboot.
[root@himalaya ghettoVCB]# ./ghettoVCB.sh -f vms_to_backup -d debug
Logging output to "/tmp/ghettoVCB-2011-03-13_15-27-59.log" ...
2011-03-13 15:27:59 -- info: ============================== ghettoVCB LOG START ==============================

2011-03-13 15:27:59 -- debug: Succesfully acquired lock directory - /tmp/ghettoVCB.lock

2011-03-13 15:27:59 -- debug: HOST VERSION: VMware ESX 4.1.0 build-260247
2011-03-13 15:27:59 -- debug: HOST LEVEL: VMware ESX 4.1.0 GA
2011-03-13 15:27:59 -- debug: HOSTNAME: himalaya.primp-industries.com

2011-03-13 15:27:59 -- info: CONFIG - VERSION = 2011_03_13_1
2011-03-13 15:27:59 -- info: CONFIG - GHETTOVCB_PID = 31074
2011-03-13 15:27:59 -- info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_VOLUME = /vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/WILLIAM_BACKUPS
2011-03-13 15:27:59 -- info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_ROTATION_COUNT = 3
2011-03-13 15:27:59 -- info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_DIR_NAMING_CONVENTION = 2011-03-13_15-27-59
2011-03-13 15:27:59 -- info: CONFIG - DISK_BACKUP_FORMAT = thin
2011-03-13 15:27:59 -- info: CONFIG - POWER_VM_DOWN_BEFORE_BACKUP = 0
2011-03-13 15:27:59 -- info: CONFIG - ENABLE_HARD_POWER_OFF = 0
2011-03-13 15:27:59 -- info: CONFIG - ITER_TO_WAIT_SHUTDOWN = 3
2011-03-13 15:27:59 -- info: CONFIG - POWER_DOWN_TIMEOUT = 5
2011-03-13 15:27:59 -- info: CONFIG - SNAPSHOT_TIMEOUT = 15
2011-03-13 15:27:59 -- info: CONFIG - LOG_LEVEL = debug
2011-03-13 15:27:59 -- info: CONFIG - BACKUP_LOG_OUTPUT = /tmp/ghettoVCB-2011-03-13_15-27-59.log
2011-03-13 15:27:59 -- info: CONFIG - VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY = 0
2011-03-13 15:27:59 -- info: CONFIG - VM_SNAPSHOT_QUIESCE = 0
2011-03-13 15:27:59 -- info: CONFIG - VMDK_FILES_TO_BACKUP = all
2011-03-13 15:27:59 -- info: CONFIG - EMAIL_LOG = 0
2011-03-13 15:27:59 -- info:
2011-03-13 15:28:01 -- debug: Storage Information before backup:
2011-03-13 15:28:01 -- debug: SRC_DATASTORE: himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage
2011-03-13 15:28:01 -- debug: SRC_DATASTORE_CAPACITY: 1830.5 GB
2011-03-13 15:28:01 -- debug: SRC_DATASTORE_FREE: 539.4 GB
2011-03-13 15:28:01 -- debug: SRC_DATASTORE_BLOCKSIZE: 4
2011-03-13 15:28:01 -- debug: SRC_DATASTORE_MAX_FILE_SIZE: 1024 GB
2011-03-13 15:28:01 -- debug:
2011-03-13 15:28:01 -- debug: DST_DATASTORE: dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups
2011-03-13 15:28:01 -- debug: DST_DATASTORE_CAPACITY: 1348.4 GB
2011-03-13 15:28:01 -- debug: DST_DATASTORE_FREE: 296.8 GB
2011-03-13 15:28:01 -- debug: DST_DATASTORE_BLOCKSIZE: NA
2011-03-13 15:28:01 -- debug: DST_DATASTORE_MAX_FILE_SIZE: NA
2011-03-13 15:28:01 -- debug:
2011-03-13 15:28:02 -- info: Initiate backup for scofield
2011-03-13 15:28:02 -- debug: /usr/sbin/vmkfstools -i "/vmfs/volumes/himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage/scofield/scofield_3.vmdk" -a "buslogic" -d "thin" "/vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/WILLIAM_BACKUPS/scofield/scofield-2011-03-13_15-27-59/scofield_3.vmdk"
Destination disk format: VMFS thin-provisioned
Cloning disk '/vmfs/volumes/himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage/scofield/scofield_3.vmdk'...
Clone: 37% done.
2011-03-13 15:28:04 -- debug: /usr/sbin/vmkfstools -i "/vmfs/volumes/himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage/scofield/scofield_2.vmdk" -a "buslogic" -d "thin" "/vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/WILLIAM_BACKUPS/scofield/scofield-2011-03-13_15-27-59/scofield_2.vmdk"
Destination disk format: VMFS thin-provisioned
Cloning disk '/vmfs/volumes/himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage/scofield/scofield_2.vmdk'...
Clone: 85% done.
2011-03-13 15:28:05 -- debug: /usr/sbin/vmkfstools -i "/vmfs/volumes/himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage/scofield/scofield_1.vmdk" -a "buslogic" -d "thin" "/vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/WILLIAM_BACKUPS/scofield/scofield-2011-03-13_15-27-59/scofield_1.vmdk"

2011-03-13 15:28:06 -- debug: /usr/sbin/vmkfstools -i "/vmfs/volumes/himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage/scofield/scofield.vmdk" -a "buslogic" -d "thin" "/vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/WILLIAM_BACKUPS/scofield/scofield-2011-03-13_15-27-59/scofield.vmdk"
Destination disk format: VMFS thin-provisioned
Cloning disk '/vmfs/volumes/himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage/scofield/scofield.vmdk'...
Clone: 78% done.
2011-03-13 15:29:52 -- info: Backup Duration: 1.83 Minutes
2011-03-13 15:29:52 -- info: Successfully completed backup for scofield!

2011-03-13 15:29:54 -- debug: Storage Information after backup:
2011-03-13 15:29:54 -- debug: SRC_DATASTORE: himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage
2011-03-13 15:29:54 -- debug: SRC_DATASTORE_CAPACITY: 1830.5 GB
2011-03-13 15:29:54 -- debug: SRC_DATASTORE_FREE: 539.4 GB
2011-03-13 15:29:54 -- debug: SRC_DATASTORE_BLOCKSIZE: 4
2011-03-13 15:29:54 -- debug: SRC_DATASTORE_MAX_FILE_SIZE: 1024 GB
2011-03-13 15:29:54 -- debug:
2011-03-13 15:29:54 -- debug: DST_DATASTORE: dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups
2011-03-13 15:29:54 -- debug: DST_DATASTORE_CAPACITY: 1348.4 GB
2011-03-13 15:29:54 -- debug: DST_DATASTORE_FREE: 296.8 GB
2011-03-13 15:29:54 -- debug: DST_DATASTORE_BLOCKSIZE: NA
2011-03-13 15:29:54 -- debug: DST_DATASTORE_MAX_FILE_SIZE: NA
2011-03-13 15:29:54 -- debug:
2011-03-13 15:29:55 -- debug: Storage Information before backup:
2011-03-13 15:29:55 -- debug: SRC_DATASTORE: himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage
2011-03-13 15:29:55 -- debug: SRC_DATASTORE_CAPACITY: 1830.5 GB
2011-03-13 15:29:55 -- debug: SRC_DATASTORE_FREE: 539.4 GB
2011-03-13 15:29:55 -- debug: SRC_DATASTORE_BLOCKSIZE: 4
2011-03-13 15:29:55 -- debug: SRC_DATASTORE_MAX_FILE_SIZE: 1024 GB
2011-03-13 15:29:55 -- debug:
2011-03-13 15:29:55 -- debug: DST_DATASTORE: dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups
2011-03-13 15:29:55 -- debug: DST_DATASTORE_CAPACITY: 1348.4 GB
2011-03-13 15:29:55 -- debug: DST_DATASTORE_FREE: 296.8 GB
2011-03-13 15:29:55 -- debug: DST_DATASTORE_BLOCKSIZE: NA
2011-03-13 15:29:55 -- debug: DST_DATASTORE_MAX_FILE_SIZE: NA
2011-03-13 15:29:55 -- debug:
2011-03-13 15:29:55 -- info: Snapshot found for vMA, backup will not take place

2011-03-13 15:29:57 -- debug: Storage Information before backup:
2011-03-13 15:29:57 -- debug: SRC_DATASTORE: himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage
2011-03-13 15:29:57 -- debug: SRC_DATASTORE_CAPACITY: 1830.5 GB
2011-03-13 15:29:57 -- debug: SRC_DATASTORE_FREE: 539.4 GB
2011-03-13 15:29:57 -- debug: SRC_DATASTORE_BLOCKSIZE: 4
2011-03-13 15:29:57 -- debug: SRC_DATASTORE_MAX_FILE_SIZE: 1024 GB
2011-03-13 15:29:57 -- debug:
2011-03-13 15:29:57 -- debug: DST_DATASTORE: dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups
2011-03-13 15:29:57 -- debug: DST_DATASTORE_CAPACITY: 1348.4 GB
2011-03-13 15:29:57 -- debug: DST_DATASTORE_FREE: 296.8 GB
2011-03-13 15:29:57 -- debug: DST_DATASTORE_BLOCKSIZE: NA
2011-03-13 15:29:57 -- debug: DST_DATASTORE_MAX_FILE_SIZE: NA
2011-03-13 15:29:57 -- debug:
2011-03-13 15:29:58 -- info: Initiate backup for vCloudConnector
2011-03-13 15:29:58 -- debug: /usr/sbin/vmkfstools -i "/vmfs/volumes/himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage/vCloudConnector/vCloudConnector.vmdk" -a "buslogic" -d "thin" "/vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/WILLIAM_BACKUPS/vCloudConnector/vCloudConnector-2011-03-13_15-27-59/vCloudConnector.vmdk"
Destination disk format: VMFS thin-provisioned
Cloning disk '/vmfs/volumes/himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage/vCloudConnector/vCloudConnector.vmdk'...
Clone: 97% done.
2011-03-13 15:30:45 -- info: Backup Duration: 47 Seconds
2011-03-13 15:30:45 -- info: WARN: vCloudConnector has some Independent VMDKs that can not be backed up!

2011-03-13 15:30:45 -- info: ###### Final status: ERROR: Only some of the VMs backed up, and some disk(s) failed! ######

2011-03-13 15:30:45 -- debug: Succesfully removed lock directory - /tmp/ghettoVCB.lock

2011-03-13 15:30:45 -- info: ============================== ghettoVCB LOG END ================================

Backup VMs stored in a list

[root@himalaya ~]# ./ghettoVCB.sh -f vms_to_backup

Backup Single VM using command-line

# ./ghettoVCB.sh -m MyVM

Backup All VMs residing on specific ESX(i) host

/ghettoVCB # ./ghettoVCB.sh -a

Backup All VMs residing on specific ESX(i) host and exclude the VMs in the exclusion list

/ghettoVCB # ./ghettoVCB.sh -a -e vm_exclusion_list

 

Backup VMs based on individual VM backup policies and log output to /tmp/ghettoVCB.log

  • Log verbosity: info (default)
  • Log output: /tmp/ghettoVCB.log 
    • Logs by default will be stored in /tmp, these log files may not persist  through reboots, especially when dealing with ESXi. You should log to  either a local or remote datastore to ensure that logs are kept upon a  reboot.


1. Create folder to hold individual VM backup policies (can be named anything):

[root@himalaya ~]# mkdir backup_config



2. Create individual VM backup policies for each VM that ensure each  file is named exactly as the display name of the VM being backed up (use  provided template to create duplicates):

[root@himalaya backup_config]# cp ghettoVCB-vm_backup_configuration_template scofield
[root@himalaya backup_config]# cp ghettoVCB-vm_backup_configuration_template vCloudConnector



Listing of VM backup policy within backup configuration directory

[root@himalaya backup_config]# ls
ghettoVCB-vm_backup_configuration_template 
scofield  vCloudConnector 



Backup policy for "scofield" (backup only 2 specific VMDKs)

[root@himalaya backup_config]# cat scofield
VM_BACKUP_VOLUME=/vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/WILLIAM_BACKUPS
DISK_BACKUP_FORMAT=thin
VM_BACKUP_ROTATION_COUNT=3
POWER_VM_DOWN_BEFORE_BACKUP=0
ENABLE_HARD_POWER_OFF=0
ITER_TO_WAIT_SHUTDOWN=4
POWER_DOWN_TIMEOUT=5
SNAPSHOT_TIMEOUT=15
ENABLE_COMPRESSION=0
VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY=0
VM_SNAPSHOT_QUIESCE=0
VMDK_FILES_TO_BACKUP="
scofield_2.vmdk,scofield_1.vmdk"



Backup policy for VM "vCloudConnector" (backup all VMDKs found)

[root@himalaya backup_config]# cat vCloudConnector
VM_BACKUP_VOLUME=/vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/WILLIAM_BACKUPS
DISK_BACKUP_FORMAT=thin
VM_BACKUP_ROTATION_COUNT=3
POWER_VM_DOWN_BEFORE_BACKUP=0
ENABLE_HARD_POWER_OFF=0
ITER_TO_WAIT_SHUTDOWN=4
POWER_DOWN_TIMEOUT=5
SNAPSHOT_TIMEOUT=15
ENABLE_COMPRESSION=0
VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY=0
VM_SNAPSHOT_QUIESCE=0
VMDK_FILES_TO_BACKUP="
vCloudConnector.vmdk"



Note: When specifying -c option (individual VM backup policy mode) if a VM is listed in the backup list but DOES NOT have a corresponding backup policy, the VM will be backed up using the  default configuration found within the ghettoVCB.sh script.

Execution of backup

[root@himalaya ~]# ./ghettoVCB.sh -f vms_to_backup -c backup_config -l /tmp/ghettoVCB.log

2011-03-13 15:40:50 -- info: ============================== ghettoVCB LOG START ==============================

2011-03-13 15:40:51 -- info: CONFIG - USING CONFIGURATION FILE = backup_config//scofield
2011-03-13 15:40:51 -- info: CONFIG - VERSION = 2011_03_13_1
2011-03-13 15:40:51 -- info: CONFIG - GHETTOVCB_PID = 2967
2011-03-13 15:40:51 -- info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_VOLUME = /vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/WILLIAM_BACKUPS
2011-03-13 15:40:51 -- info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_ROTATION_COUNT = 3
2011-03-13 15:40:51 -- info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_DIR_NAMING_CONVENTION = 2011-03-13_15-40-50
2011-03-13 15:40:51 -- info: CONFIG - DISK_BACKUP_FORMAT = thin
2011-03-13 15:40:51 -- info: CONFIG - POWER_VM_DOWN_BEFORE_BACKUP = 0
2011-03-13 15:40:51 -- info: CONFIG - ENABLE_HARD_POWER_OFF = 0
2011-03-13 15:40:51 -- info: CONFIG - ITER_TO_WAIT_SHUTDOWN = 4
2011-03-13 15:40:51 -- info: CONFIG - POWER_DOWN_TIMEOUT = 5
2011-03-13 15:40:51 -- info: CONFIG - SNAPSHOT_TIMEOUT = 15
2011-03-13 15:40:51 -- info: CONFIG - LOG_LEVEL = info
2011-03-13 15:40:51 -- info: CONFIG - BACKUP_LOG_OUTPUT = /tmp/ghettoVCB.log
2011-03-13 15:40:51 -- info: CONFIG - VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY = 0
2011-03-13 15:40:51 -- info: CONFIG - VM_SNAPSHOT_QUIESCE = 0
2011-03-13 15:40:51 -- info: CONFIG - VMDK_FILES_TO_BACKUP = scofield_2.vmdk,scofield_1.vmdk
2011-03-13 15:40:51 -- info: CONFIG - EMAIL_LOG = 0
2011-03-13 15:40:51 -- info:
2011-03-13 15:40:53 -- info: Initiate backup for scofield
Destination disk format: VMFS thin-provisioned
Cloning disk '/vmfs/volumes/himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage/scofield/scofield_2.vmdk'...
Clone: 100% done.

Destination disk format: VMFS thin-provisioned
Cloning disk '/vmfs/volumes/himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage/scofield/scofield_1.vmdk'...
Clone: 100% done.

2011-03-13 15:40:55 -- info: Backup Duration: 2 Seconds
2011-03-13 15:40:55 -- info: Successfully completed backup for scofield!

2011-03-13 15:40:57 -- info: CONFIG - VERSION = 2011_03_13_1
2011-03-13 15:40:57 -- info: CONFIG - GHETTOVCB_PID = 2967
2011-03-13 15:40:57 -- info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_VOLUME = /vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/WILLIAM_BACKUPS
2011-03-13 15:40:57 -- info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_ROTATION_COUNT = 3
2011-03-13 15:40:57 -- info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_DIR_NAMING_CONVENTION = 2011-03-13_15-40-50
2011-03-13 15:40:57 -- info: CONFIG - DISK_BACKUP_FORMAT = thin
2011-03-13 15:40:57 -- info: CONFIG - POWER_VM_DOWN_BEFORE_BACKUP = 0
2011-03-13 15:40:57 -- info: CONFIG - ENABLE_HARD_POWER_OFF = 0
2011-03-13 15:40:57 -- info: CONFIG - ITER_TO_WAIT_SHUTDOWN = 3
2011-03-13 15:40:57 -- info: CONFIG - POWER_DOWN_TIMEOUT = 5
2011-03-13 15:40:57 -- info: CONFIG - SNAPSHOT_TIMEOUT = 15
2011-03-13 15:40:57 -- info: CONFIG - LOG_LEVEL = info
2011-03-13 15:40:57 -- info: CONFIG - BACKUP_LOG_OUTPUT = /tmp/ghettoVCB.log
2011-03-13 15:40:57 -- info: CONFIG - VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY = 0
2011-03-13 15:40:57 -- info: CONFIG - VM_SNAPSHOT_QUIESCE = 0
2011-03-13 15:40:57 -- info: CONFIG - VMDK_FILES_TO_BACKUP = all
2011-03-13 15:40:57 -- info: CONFIG - EMAIL_LOG = 0
2011-03-13 15:40:57 -- info:
2011-03-13 15:40:59 -- info: Snapshot found for vMA, backup will not take place

2011-03-13 15:40:59 -- info: CONFIG - USING CONFIGURATION FILE = backup_config//vCloudConnector
2011-03-13 15:40:59 -- info: CONFIG - VERSION = 2011_03_13_1
2011-03-13 15:40:59 -- info: CONFIG - GHETTOVCB_PID = 2967
2011-03-13 15:40:59 -- info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_VOLUME = /vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/WILLIAM_BACKUPS
2011-03-13 15:40:59 -- info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_ROTATION_COUNT = 3
2011-03-13 15:40:59 -- info: CONFIG - VM_BACKUP_DIR_NAMING_CONVENTION = 2011-03-13_15-40-50
2011-03-13 15:40:59 -- info: CONFIG - DISK_BACKUP_FORMAT = thin
2011-03-13 15:40:59 -- info: CONFIG - POWER_VM_DOWN_BEFORE_BACKUP = 0
2011-03-13 15:40:59 -- info: CONFIG - ENABLE_HARD_POWER_OFF = 0
2011-03-13 15:40:59 -- info: CONFIG - ITER_TO_WAIT_SHUTDOWN = 4
2011-03-13 15:40:59 -- info: CONFIG - POWER_DOWN_TIMEOUT = 5
2011-03-13 15:40:59 -- info: CONFIG - SNAPSHOT_TIMEOUT = 15
2011-03-13 15:40:59 -- info: CONFIG - LOG_LEVEL = info
2011-03-13 15:40:59 -- info: CONFIG - BACKUP_LOG_OUTPUT = /tmp/ghettoVCB.log
2011-03-13 15:40:59 -- info: CONFIG - VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY = 0
2011-03-13 15:40:59 -- info: CONFIG - VM_SNAPSHOT_QUIESCE = 0
2011-03-13 15:40:59 -- info: CONFIG - VMDK_FILES_TO_BACKUP = vCloudConnector.vmdk
2011-03-13 15:40:59 -- info: CONFIG - EMAIL_LOG = 0
2011-03-13 15:40:59 -- info:
2011-03-13 15:41:01 -- info: Initiate backup for vCloudConnector
Destination disk format: VMFS thin-provisioned
Cloning disk '/vmfs/volumes/himalaya-local-SATA.RE4-GP:Storage/vCloudConnector/vCloudConnector.vmdk'...
Clone: 100% done.

2011-03-13 15:41:51 -- info: Backup Duration: 50 Seconds
2011-03-13 15:41:51 -- info: WARN: vCloudConnector has some Independent VMDKs that can not be backed up!

2011-03-13 15:41:51 -- info: ###### Final status: ERROR: Only some of the VMs backed up, and some disk(s) failed! ######

2011-03-13 15:41:51 -- info: ============================== ghettoVCB LOG END ================================

 

 


 

Enable compression for backups (EXPERIMENTAL SUPPORT)


Please take a look at FAQ #25 for more details before continuing

To make use of this feature, modify the variable ENABLE_COMPRESSION from 0 to 1. Please note, do not mix uncompressed backups with  compressed backups. Ensure that directories selected for backups do not contain any backups with previous versions of ghettoVCB before enabling  and implementing the compressed backups feature.

 


 

Email Backup Logs (EXPERIMENTAL SUPPORT)

nc (netcat) utility must be present for email support to function, this utility is a now a default with the release of vSphere 4.1 or greater, previous releases of VI 3.5 and/or vSphere 4.0 does not contain this utility. The reason this is listed as experimental is it may not be compatible with all email servers as the script utlizes nc (netcat) utility to communicate to an email server. This feature is  provided as-is with no guarantees. If you enable this feature, a  separate log will be generated along side  any normal logging which will  be used to email recipient. If for whatever reason, the email fails to  send, an entry will appear per the normal logging mechanism.

 

Users should also make note due to limited functionality of netcat, it uses SMTP pipelining which is not the most ideal method of communicating with an SMTP server. Email from ghettoVCB may not work if your email server does not support this feature.

 

You can define an email recipient in the following two ways:

 

EMAIL_TO=william@virtuallyghetto.com

OR

EMAIL_TO=william@virtuallyghetto.com,tuan@virtuallyghetto.com

 

If you are running ESXi 5.1, you will need to create a custom firewall rule to allow your email traffic to go out which I will assume is default port 25. Here are the steps for creating a custom email rule.

 

Step 1 - Create a file called /etc/vmware/firewall/email.xml with contains the following:

<ConfigRoot>
  <service>
    <id>email</id>
    <rule id="0000">
      <direction>outbound</direction>
      <protocol>tcp</protocol>
      <porttype>dst</porttype>
      <port>25</port>
    </rule>
    <enabled>true</enabled>
    <required>false</required>
  </service>
</ConfigRoot>

 

Step 2 - Reload the ESXi firewall by running the following ESXCLI command:

~ #
esxcli network firewall refresh

Step 3 - Confirm that your email rule has been loaded by running the following ESXCLI command:

~ # esxcli network firewall ruleset list | grep email
email                  true

Step 4 - Connect to your email server by usingn nc (netcat) by running the following command and specifying the IP Address/Port of your email server:

~ # nc 172.30.0.107 25
220 mail.primp-industries.com ESMTP Postfix

You should recieve a response from your email server and you can enter Ctrl+C to exit. This custom ESXi firewall rule will not persist after a reboot, so you should create a custom VIB to ensure it persists after a system reboot. Please take a look at this article for the details.

 


 

Rsync Support  (EXPERIMENTAL SUPPORT)


To make use of this feature, modify the variable RSYNC_LINK from 0  to 1. Please note, this is an experimental feature request from users that rely on rsync to replicate changes from one datastore volume to  another datastore volume. The premise of this feature is to have a standardized folder that rsync can monitor for changes to replicate to  another backup datastore. When this feature is enabled, a symbolic link  will be generated with the format of "<VMNAME>-symlink" and will  reference the latest successful VM backup. You can then rely on this  symbolic link to watch for changes and replicate to your backup  datastore.

Here is an example of what this would look like:

[root@himalaya ghettoVCB]# ls -la /vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/WILLIAM_BACKUPS/vcma/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 1 nobody nobody 110 Sep 27 08:08 .
drwxr-xr-x 1 nobody nobody  17 Sep 16 14:01 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 nobody nobody  89 Sep 27 08:08 vcma-symlink -> /vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/WILLIAM_BACKUPS/vcma/vcma-2010-09-27_08-07-37
drwxr-xr-x 1 nobody nobody  58 Sep 27 08:04 vcma-2010-09-27_08-04-26
drwxr-xr-x 1 nobody nobody  58 Sep 27 08:06 vcma-2010-09-27_08-05-55
drwxr-xr-x 1 nobody nobody  58 Sep 27 08:08 vcma-2010-09-27_08-07-37



FYI - This feature has not been tested, please provide feedback if this does not work as expected.


 

Restore backups (ghettoVCB-restore.sh):


To recover a VM that has been processed by ghettoVCB, please take a look at this document: Ghetto Tech Preview - ghettoVCB-restore.sh - Restoring VM's backed up from ghettoVCB to ESX(i) 3.5, ...

 


Stopping ghettoVCB Process:


There may be a situation where you need to stop the ghettoVCB process and entering Ctrl+C will only kill off the main ghettoVCB process, however there may still be other spawn processes that you may need to identify and stop. Below are two scenarios you may encounter and the process to completely stop all processes related to ghettoVCB.

 

Interactively running ghettoVCB:

 

Step 1 - Press Ctrl+C which will kill off the main ghettoVCB instance

 

Step 2 - Search for any existing ghettoVCB process by running the following:

 

# ps -c | grep ghettoVCB | grep -v grep
3360136 3360136 tail                 tail -f /tmp/ghettoVCB.work/ghettovcb.Cs1M1x

 

Step 3 - Here we can see there is a tail command that was used in the script. We need to stop this process by using the kill command which accepts the PID (Process ID) which is identified by the first value on the far left hand side of the command. In this example, it is 3360136.

# kill -9 3360136

 

Note: Make sure you identify the correct PID, else you could accidently impact a running VM or worse your ESXi host.

 

Step 4 - Depending on where you stopped the ghettoVCB process, you may need to consolidate or remove any existing snapshots that may exist on the VM that was being backed up. You can easily do so by using the vSphere Client.

 

Non-Interactively running ghettoVCB:

 

Step 1 - Search for the ghettoVCB process (you can also validate the PID from the logs)

 

~ # ps -c | grep ghettoVCB | grep -v grep
3360393 3360393 busybox              ash ./ghettoVCB.sh -f list -d debug
3360790 3360790 tail                 tail -f /tmp/ghettoVCB.work/ghettovcb.deGeB7

 

Step 2 - Stop both the main ghettoVCB instance & tail command by using the kill command and specifying their respective PID IDs:

 

kill -9 3360393
kill -9 3360790

 

Step 3 - If a VM was in the process of being backed up, there is an additional process for the actual vmkfstools copy. You will need to identify the process for that and kill that as well. We will again use ps -c command and search for any vmkfstools that are running:

# ps -c | grep vmkfstools | grep -v grep
3360796 3360796 vmkfstools           /sbin/vmkfstools -i /vmfs/volumes/himalaya-temporary/VC-Windows/VC-Windows.vmdk -a lsilogic -d thin /vmfs/volumes/test-dont-use-this-volume/backups/VC-Windows/VC-Windows-2013-01-26_16-45-35/VC-Windows.vmdk

 

 

Step 4 - In case there is someone manually running a vmkfstools, make sure you take a look at the command itself and that it maps back to the current VM that was being backed up before kill the process. Once you have identified the proper PID, go ahead and use the kill command:

# kill -9 3360796

 

Step 5 - Depending on where you stopped the  ghettoVCB process, you may need to consolidate or remove any existing  snapshots that may exist on the VM that was being backed up. You can  easily do so by using the vSphere Client.

 


 

Cronjob FAQ:


Please take a moment to read over what is a cronjob and how to set one up, before continuing

The task of configuring cronjobs on classic ESX servers (with Service Console) is no different than traditional cronjobs on *nix operating  systems (this procedure is outlined in the link above). With ESXi on the  other hand, additional factors need to be taken into account when  setting up cronjobs in the limited shell console called Busybox because changes made do not persist through a system reboot. The following document will outline steps to ensure that cronjob configurations are saved and present upon a reboot.

 

Important Note: Always redirect the ghettoVCB output to /dev/null and/or to a log when automating via cron, this becomes very important as one user has identified a limited amount of buffer capacity in which once filled, may cause ghettoVCB to stop in the middle of a backup. This primarily only affects users on ESXi, but it is good practice to always redirect the output. Also ensure you are specifying the FULL PATH when referencing the ghettoVCB script, input or log files.

 

e.g.

0 0 * * 1-5 /vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/ghettoVCB.sh -f /vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/backuplist > /dev/null

or

0 0 * * 1-5 /vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/ghettoVCB.sh -f /vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/backuplist > /tmp/ghettoVCB.log

 

Task: Configure ghettoVCB.sh to execute a backup five days a week (M-F) at 12AM (midnight) everyday and send output to a unique log file

Configure on ESX:

1. As root, you'll install your cronjob by issuing:

[root@himalaya ~]# crontab -e



2. Append the following entry:

0 0 * * 1-5 /vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/ghettoVCB.sh -f /vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/backuplist > /vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/ghettoVCB-backup-$(date +\%s).log



3. Save and exit

[root@himalaya dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups]# crontab -e
no crontab for root - using an empty one
crontab: installing new crontab



4. List out and verify the cronjob that was just created:

[root@himalaya dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups]# crontab -l
0 0 * * 1-5 /vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/ghettoVCB.sh -f /vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/backuplist > /vmfs/volumes/dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups/ghettoVCB-backup-$(date +\%s).log



You're ready to go!

Configure on ESXi:

1. Setup the cronjob by appending the following line to /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root:

0 0 * * 1-5 /vmfs/volumes/simplejack-local-storage/ghettoVCB.sh -f /vmfs/volumes/simplejack-local-storage/backuplist > /vmfs/volumes/simplejack-local-storage/ghettoVCB-backup-$(date +\%s).log

 

If you are unable to edit/modify /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root, please make a copy and then edit the copy with the changes

cp /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root.backup

Once your changes have been made, then "mv" the backup to the original file. This may occur on ESXi 4.x or 5.x hosts

mv /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root.backup /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root

You can now verify the crontab entry has been updated by using "cat" utility.


2. Kill the current crond (cron daemon) and then restart the crond for the changes to take affect:

On ESXi < 3.5u3

kill $(ps | grep crond | cut -f 1 -d ' ')



On ESXi 3.5u3+

~ # kill $(pidof crond)
~ # crond



On ESXi 4.x/5.0

~ # kill $(cat /var/run/crond.pid)
~ # busybox crond

 

On ESXi 5.1 to 6.x

~ # kill $(cat /var/run/crond.pid)
~ # crond

 

On ESXi 7.x

~ # kill $(cat /var/run/crond.pid)
~ # /usr/lib/vmware/busybox/bin/busybox crond


3. Now that the cronjob is ready to go, you need to ensure that this  cronjob will persist through a reboot. You'll need to add the following two lines to /etc/rc.local (ensure that the cron entry matches what was defined above). In ESXi 5.1, you will need to edit /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh instead of /etc/rc.local as that is no longer valid.

On ESXi 3.5

/bin/kill $(pidof crond)
/bin/echo "0 0 * * 1-5 /vmfs/volumes/simplejack-local-storage/ghettoVCB.sh -f /vmfs/volumes/simplejack-local-storage/backuplist > /vmfs/volumes/simplejack-local-storage/ghettoVCB-backup-\$(date +\\%s).log" >> /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root
crond



On ESXi 4.x/5.0

/bin/kill $(cat /var/run/crond.pid)
/bin/echo "0 0 * * 1-5 /vmfs/volumes/simplejack-local-storage/ghettoVCB.sh -f /vmfs/volumes/simplejack-local-storage/backuplist > /vmfs/volumes/simplejack-local-storage/ghettoVCB-backup-\$(date +\\%s).log" >> /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root
/bin/busybox crond

 

On ESXi 5.1 to 6.x

/bin/kill $(cat /var/run/crond.pid)
/bin/echo "0 0 * * 1-5 /vmfs/volumes/simplejack-local-storage/ghettoVCB.sh -f /vmfs/volumes/simplejack-local-storage/backuplist > /vmfs/volumes/simplejack-local-storage/ghettoVCB-backup-\$(date +\\%s).log" >> /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root
crond

 

On ESXi 7.x

/bin/kill $(cat /var/run/crond.pid) > /dev/null 2>&1
/bin/echo "0 0 * * 1-5 /vmfs/volumes/simplejack-local-storage/ghettoVCB.sh -f /vmfs/volumes/simplejack-local-storage/backuplist > /vmfs/volumes/simplejack-local-storage/ghettoVCB-backup-\$(date +\\%s).log" >> /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root
/usr/lib/vmware/busybox/bin/busybox crond



Afterwards the file should look like the following:

~ # cat /etc/rc.local
#! /bin/ash
export PATH=/sbin:/bin

log() {
   echo "$1"
   logger init "$1"
}

#execute all service retgistered in /etc/rc.local.d
if [http:// -d /etc/rc.local.d |http:// -d /etc/rc.local.d ]; then
   for filename in `find /etc/rc.local.d/ | sort`
      do
         if [ -f $filename ] && [ -x $filename ]; then
            log "running $filename"
            $filename
         fi
      done
fi

/bin/kill $(cat /var/run/crond.pid)
/bin/echo "0 0 * * 1-5 /vmfs/volumes/simplejack-local-storage/ghettoVCB.sh -f /vmfs/volumes/simplejack-local-storage/backuplist > /vmfs/volumes/simplejack-local-storage/ghettoVCB-backup-\$(date +\\%s).log" >> /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root
/bin/busybox crond



This will ensure that the cronjob is re-created upon a reboot of the system through a startup script

2. To ensure that this is saved in the ESXi configuration, we need to manually initiate an ESXi backup by running:

~ # /sbin/auto-backup.sh
config implicitly loaded
local.tgz
etc/vmware/vmkiscsid/vmkiscsid.db
etc/dropbear/dropbear_dss_host_key
etc/dropbear/dropbear_rsa_host_key
etc/opt/vmware/vpxa/vpxa.cfg
etc/opt/vmware/vpxa/dasConfig.xml
etc/sysconfig/network
etc/vmware/hostd/authorization.xml
etc/vmware/hostd/hostsvc.xml
etc/vmware/hostd/pools.xml
etc/vmware/hostd/vmAutoStart.xml
etc/vmware/hostd/vmInventory.xml
etc/vmware/hostd/proxy.xml
etc/vmware/ssl/rui.crt
etc/vmware/ssl/rui.key
etc/vmware/vmkiscsid/initiatorname.iscsi
etc/vmware/vmkiscsid/iscsid.conf
etc/vmware/vmware.lic
etc/vmware/config
etc/vmware/dvsdata.db
etc/vmware/esx.conf
etc/vmware/license.cfg
etc/vmware/locker.conf
etc/vmware/snmp.xml
etc/group
etc/hosts
etc/inetd.conf
etc/rc.local
etc/chkconfig.db
etc/ntp.conf
etc/passwd
etc/random-seed
etc/resolv.conf
etc/shadow
etc/sfcb/repository/root/interop/cim_indicationfilter.idx
etc/sfcb/repository/root/interop/cim_indicationhandlercimxml.idx
etc/sfcb/repository/root/interop/cim_listenerdestinationcimxml.idx
etc/sfcb/repository/root/interop/cim_indicationsubscription.idx
Binary files /etc/vmware/dvsdata.db and /tmp/auto-backup.31345.dir/etc/vmware/dvsdata.db differ
config implicitly loaded
Saving current state in /bootbank
Clock updated.
Time: 20:40:36   Date: 08/14/2009   UTC



Now you're really done!

If you're still having trouble getting the cronjob to work, ensure that  you've specified the correct parameters and there aren’t any typos in  any part of the syntax.

Ensure crond (cron daemon) is running:

ESX 3.x/4.0:

[root@himalaya dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups]# ps -ef | grep crond | grep -v grep
root      2625     1  0 Aug13 ?        00:00:00 crond



ESXi 3.x/4.x/5.x:

~ # ps | grep crond | grep -v grep
5196 5196 busybox              crond

 

Ensure that the date/time on your ESX(i) host is setup correctly:

ESX(i):

[root@himalaya dlgCore-NFS-bigboi.VM-Backups]# date
Fri Aug 14 23:44:47 PDT 2009

 

Note: Careful attention must be noted if more than one backup is performed per day. Backup windows  should be staggered to avoid contention or saturation of resources  during these periods.

 


 

FAQ:


0Q: I'm getting error X when using the script or I'm not getting any errors, the backup didn’t even take place. What can I do?
0A: First off, before posting a comment/question, please thoroughly read through the ENTIRE documentation including the FAQs to see if your question has already been ansered.

1Q: I've read through the entire documentation + FAQs and still have not found my answer to the problem I'm seeing. What can I do?
1A: Please join the ghettoVCB Group to post your question/comment.

 

2Q: I've sent you private message or email but I haven't received a response? What gives?
2A: I do not accept issues/bugs reported via PM or email, I will  reply back, directing you to post on the appropriate VMTN forum (that's  what it's for). If the data/results you're providing is truely senstive  to your environment I will hear you out, but 99.99% it is not, so please  do not messsage/email me directly. I do monitor all forums that contain  my script including the normal VMTN forums and will try to get back to  your question as soon as I can and as time permits. Please do be patient as you're not the only person using the script (600,000+ views), thank you.

3Q: Can I schedule backups to take place hourly, daily, monthly, yearly?
3A: Yes, do a search online for crontab.

4Q: I would like to setup cronjob for ESX(i) 3.5 or 4.0?
4A: Take a look at the Cronjob FAQ section in this document.

5Q: I want to schedule my backup on Windows, how do I do this?
5A: Do a search for plink. Make sure you have paired SSH keys setup between your Windows system and ESX/ESXi host.

6Q: I only have a single ESXi host. I want to take backups and  store them somewhere else. The problem is: I don't have NFS, iSCSI nor  FC SAN. What can I do?
6A: You can use local storage to store your backups assuming that  you have enough space on the destination datastore.  Afterwards, you  can use scp (WinSCP/FastSCP) to transfer the backups from the ESXi host  to your local desktop.

7Q: I’m pissed; the backup is taking too long. My datastore is of type X?
7A: YMMV, take a look at your storage configuration and make sure it is optimized. 

8Q: I noticed that the backup rotation is occurring after a  backup. I don't have enough local storage space, can the process be  changed?
8A: This is primarily done to ensure that you have at least one  good backup in case the new backup fails. If you would like to modify  the script, you're more than welcome to do so.

9Q: What is the best storage configuration for datastore type X?
9A: Search the VMTN forums; there are various configurations for the different type of storage/etc. 

10Q: I want to setup an NFS server to run my backups. Which is the best and should it be virtual or physical? 
10A: Please refer to answer 7A. From experience, we’ve seen  physical instances of NFS servers to be faster than their virtual  counterparts. As always, YMMV.

11Q: I have VMs that have snapshots. I want to back these things up but the script doesn’t let me do it. How do I fix that?
11A: VM snapshots are not meant to be kept for long durations.  When backing up a VM that contains a snapshot, you should ensure all snapshots have been committed prior to running a backup. No exceptions  will be made…ever.

12Q: I would like to restore from backup, what is the best method?
12A: The restore process will be unique for each environment and  should be determined by your backup/recovery plans. At a high level you have the option of mounting the backup datastore and registering the VM  in question or copy the VM from the backup datastore to the ESX/ESXi  host. The latter is recommended so that you're not running a VM living  on the backup datastore or inadvertently modifying your backup VM(s). You can also take a look at ghettoVCB-restore which is experimentally supported.

13Q: When I try to run the script I get: "-bash: ./ghettoVCB.sh: Permission denied", what is wrong?
13A: You need to change the permission on the script to be executable, chmod +x ghettoVCB.sh

14Q: Where can I download the latest version of the script?
14A: The latest version is available on on github - https://github.com/lamw/ghettoVCB/downloads

15Q: I would like to suggest/recommend feature X, can I get it?  When can I get it? Why isn't it here, what gives? 
15A: The general purpose of this script is to provide a backup  solution around VMware VMs. Any additional features outside of that  process will be taken into consideration depending on the amount of  time, number of requests and actual usefulness as a whole to the  community rather than to an individual.

16Q: I have found this script to be very useful and would like to contribute back, what can I do?
16A: To continue to develop and share new scripts and resources with the community, we need your support. You can donate here Thank You!

17Q: What are the different type of backup uses cases that are supported with ghettoVCB?
17A: 1) Live backup of VM with the use of a snapshot and 2)  Offline backup of a VM without a snapshot. These are the only two use  cases supported by the script.

18Q: When I execute the script on ESX(i) I get some funky errors such as ": not found.sh" or "command not found". What is this?
18A: Most likely you have some ^M characters within the script  which may have come from either editing the script using Windows editor,  uploading the script using the datastore browser OR using wget. The  best option is to either using WinSCP on Windows to upload the script  and edit using vi editor on ESX(i) host OR Linux/UNIX scp to copy the  script into the host. If you still continue to have the issue, do a  search online on various methods of removing this Windows return  carriage from the script

19Q: My backup works fine OR it works for a single backup but I get an error message  "Input/output error" or "-ash: YYYY-MM-DD: not found" during the snapshot removal process. What is this?
19A: The issue has been recently identified by few users as a problem with user's NFS server in which it reports an error when deleting large files that take longer than 10seconds. VMware has recently released a KB article http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1035332 explaining the details and starting with vSphere 4.1 Update 2 or vSphere 5.0, a new advanced ESX(i) parameter has been introduced to increase the timeout. This has resolved the problem for several users and maybe something to consider if you are running into this issue, specifically with NFS based backups.

20Q: Will this script function with vCenter and DRS enabled?
20Q: No, if the ESX(i) hosts are in a DRS enabled cluster, VMs  that are to be backed up could potentially be backed up twice or never  get backed up. The script is executed on a per host basis and one would  need to come up a way of tracking backups on all hosts and perhaps write  out to external file to ensure that all VMs are backed up. The main use  case for this script are for standalone ESX(i) host

21Q: I'm trying to use WinSCP to manually copy VM files but it's very slow or never completes on huge files, why is that?
21A: WinSCP was not designed for copying VM files out of your  ESX(i) host, take a look at Veeam's FastSCP which is designed for moving  VM files and is a free utility.

22Q: Can I use setup NFS Server using Windows Services for UNIX (WSFU) and will it work?
22A: I've only heard a handful of users that have successfully  implemented WSFU and got it working, YMMV. VMware also has a KB article  decribing the setup process here: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1004490 for those that are interested. Here is a thread on a user's experience between Windows Vs. Linux NFS that maybe helpful.

23Q: How do VMware Snapshots work?
23A: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1015180

24Q: What files make up a Virtual Machine?
24A: http://virtualisedreality.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/quick-reminder-of-what-files-make-up-a-virtual-ma...

25Q: I'm having some issues restoring a compressed VM backup?
25A: There is a limitation in the size of the VM for compression  under ESXi 3.x & 4.x, this limitation is in the unsupported Busybox  console and should not affect classic ESX 3.x/4.x. On ESXi 3.x,  the maximum largest supported VM is 4GB for compression and on ESXi 4.x  the largest supported VM is 8GB. If you try to compress a larger VM, you  may run into issues when trying to extract upon a restore. PLEASE TEST THE RESTORE PROCESS BEFORE MOVING TO PRODUCTION SYSTEMS!

26Q: I'm backing up my VM as "thin" format but I'm still not noticing any size reduction in the backup? What gives?
2bA: Please refer to this blog post which explains what's going on: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/07/31/storage-vmotion-and-moving-to-a-thin-provisioned-disk/

27Q: I've enabled VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY and when I restore my VM it's still offline, I thought this would keep it's memory state?
27A: VM_SNAPSHOT_MEMORY is only used to ensure when the  snapshot is taken, it's memory contents are also captured. This is only  relavent to the actual snapshot itself and it's not used in any  shape/way/form in regards to the backup. All backups taken whether your  VM is running or offline will result in an offline VM backup when you  restore. This was originally added for debugging purposes and in  generally should be left disabled

28Q: Can I rename the directories and the VMs after a VM has been backed up?
28A: The answer yes, you can ... but you may run into all sorts  of issues which may break the backup process. The script expects a  certain layout and specific naming scheme for it to maintain the proper  rotation count. If you need to move or rename a VM, please take it out  of the directory and place it in another location

29Q: Can ghettoVCB support CBT (Change Block Tracking)?
29A: No, that is a functionality of the vSphere API + VDDK API (vSphere Disk Development Kit). You will need to look at paid solutions such as VMware vDR, Veeam Backup & Recovery, PHD Virtual Backups, etc. to leverage that functionailty.

 

30Q: Does ghettoVCB support rsync backups?
30A: Currently ghettoVCB does not support rsync backups, you either obtain or compile your own static rsync binary and run on ESXi, but this is an unsupported configuration. You may take a look at this blog post for some details.

 

31Q: How can I contribute back?

31A: You can provide feedback/comments on the ghettoVCB Group. If you have found this script to be useful and would like to contribute back, please click here to donate.

 

32Q: How can select individual VMDKs to backup from a VM?

32A: Ideally you would use the "-c" option which requires you to create individual VM configuration file, this is where you would select specific VMDKs to backup. Note, that if you do not need to define all properties, anything not defined will adhere from the default global properties whether you're editing the ghettoVCB.sh script or using ghettoVCB global configuration file. It is not recommended that you edit the ghettoVCB.sh script and modify the VMDK_FILES_TO_BACKUP variable, but if you would like to keep everything in one script, you may add the extensive list of VMDKs to backup but do know this can get error prone as script may be edited frequently and lose some flexibility to support multiple environments.

 

33Q: Why is email not working when I'm using ESXi 5.x but it worked in ESXi 4.x?

33A: ESXi 5.x has implemented a new firewall which requires the email port that is being used to be opened. Please refer to the following articles on creating a custom firewall rule for email:

http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2012/09/creating-custom-vibs-for-esxi-50-51.html

How to Create Custom Firewall Rules in ESXi 50

How to Persist Configuration Changes in ESXi 4.x/5.x Part 1

How to Persist Configuration Changes in ESXi 4.x/5.x Part 2

 

34Q: How do I stop the ghettoVCB process?

34A: Take a look at the Stopping ghettoVCB Process section of the documentation for more details.

 


 

Our NFS Server Configuration


Many have asked what is the best configuration and recommendation for  setting up a cheap NFS Server to run backups for VMs. This has been a  question we've tried to stay away from just because the possiblities and  solutions are endless. One can go with physical vs. virtual, use VSA  (Virtual Storage Appliances) such as OpenFiler or Lefthand Networks,  Windows vs. Linux/UNIX. We've not personally tested and verify all these  solutions and it all comes down to "it depends" type of answer. Though  from our experience, we've had much better success with a physical  server than a virtual.

It is also well known that some users are experiencing backup issues  when running specifically against NFS, primarily around the rotation and  purging of previous backups. The theory from what we can tell by  talking to various users is that when the rotation is occuring, the  request to delete the file(s) may take awhile and does not return within  a certain time frame and causes the script to error out with unexpected  messages. Though the backups were successful, it will cause unexpected  results with directory structures on the NFS target. We've not been able  to isolate why this is occuring and maybe due to NFS  configuration/exports or hardware or connection not being able to  support this process.

We'll continue to help where we can in diagonising this issus but we  wanted to share our current NFS configuration, perhaps it may help some  users who are new or trying to setup their system. ( Disclaimer: These configurations are not recommendations nor endorsement for any of the components being used)

UPDATE: Please also read FAQ #19 for details + resolution

Server Type: Physical
Model: HP DL320 G2
OS: Arch linux 2.6.28
Disks: 2 x 1.5TB
RAID: Software RAID1
Source Host Backups: ESX 3.5u4 and ESX 4.0u1 (We don't run any ESXi hosts)

uname -a output

Linux XXXXX.XXXXX.ucsb.edu 2.6.28-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Jan 18 20:17:17 UTC 2009 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.06GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux



NICs:

00:05.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5702X Gigabit Ethernet (rev 02)
00:06.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5702X Gigabit Ethernet (rev 02)



NFS Export Options:

/exports/vm-backups XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/24(rw,async,all_squash,anonuid=99,anongid=99)

 

*One important thing to check is to verify that your NFS exportion options are setup correctly, "async" should be configured to ensure that all IO requests are processed and  reply back to the client before waiting for the data to be written to  the storage.

*Recently VMware released a KB article describing the various "Advanced NFS Options" and their meanings and recommendations: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1007909 We've not personally had to touch any of these, but for other vendors  such as EMC and NetApp, there are some best practices around configuring  some of these values depending on the number of NFS volumes or number  of ESX(i) host connecting to a volume. You may want to take a look to  see if any of these options may help with NFS issue that some are seeing

*Users should also try to look at their ESX(i) host logs during the time  interval when they're noticing these issues and see if they can find  any correlation along with monitoring the performance on their NFS  Server.

*Lastly, there are probably other things that can be done to improve NFS  performance or further optimization, a simple search online will also  yield many resources.


 

Useful Links:


Windows utility to email ghettoVCB Backup Logs - http://www.waldrondigital.com/2010/05/11/ghettovcb-e-mail-rotate-logs-batch-file-for-vmware/
Windows front-end utility to ghettoVCB -  http://www.magikmon.com/mkbackup/ghettovcb.en.html

Note: Neither of these tools are supported, for questions or comments regarding these utilities please refer to the author's pages.

 


 

Change log:

01/13/13 -

 

Enhancements:

  • ghettoVCB & ghettoVCB-restore supports ESXi 5.1
  • Support for individual VM backup via command-line and added new -m flag
  • Support VM(s) with existing snapshots and added new configuration variable called ALLOW_VMS_WITH_SNAPSHOTS_TO_BE_BACKEDUP
  • Support multiple running instances of ghettoVCB running and added a new -w flag
  • Configure VM shutdown/startup order and added two new configuration variables called VM_SHUTDOWN_ORDER and VM_STARTUP_ORDER
  • Support changing custom VM name during restore
  • Documentation updates

Fixes:

  • Fixed tab/indentation for both ghettoVCB/ghettoVCB-restore
  • Temp email files and email headers
  • Fixed "whoami" command as it is no longer valid in ESXi 5.1 to check for proper user
  • Added 2gbsparse check in sanity method to auto-load VMkernel module
  • Various typos, for greater detail, you can refer to the "diff" in github repo

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

11/19/11 -

 

Enhancements:

  • ghettoVCB & ghettoVCB-restore is now packaged together and both scripts are versioned on github
  • ESXi 5 firewall check for email port (Check FAQ #33 for more details)
  • New EMAIL_DELAY_INTERVAL netcat variable to control slow SMTP servers
  • ADAPTER_TYPE (buslogic,lsilogic,ide) no longer need to manually specified, script will auto-detect based on VMDK descriptor file
  • Using symlink -f parameter for quicker unlink/re-link for RSYNC use case
  • Updated documentation, including NFS issues (Check FAQ #19 for more details including new VMware KB article)

Fixes:

  • vSphere 4.1 Update 2 introduced new vim-cmd snapshot.remove param, this has now been updated in script to detect this new param change

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

06/28/11 -


Enhancements:

  • Support for vSphere 5.0 - ESXi 5.0

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

05/22/11 -


Enhancements:

 

  • Support for multiple email recipients
  • Support for individual VMDK backup within ghettoVCB.sh script - FAQ #33

 

Fixes:

  • Minor fix in additional validation prior to VM rotation

 


03/14/11 -

 

Enhancements:

  • Enhanced "dryrun" details including configuration and/or VMDK(s) issues 
    • Warning messages about physical RDM and Independent VMDK(s)
    • Warning messages about VMs with snapshots
  • New storage debugging details 
    • Datastore details both pre and post backups
    • Datstore blocksize miss-match warnings
  • Quick email status summary is now included in the title of the email, this allows a user to quickly verify whether a backup was successful or had complete/partial failure without having to go through the logs.
  • Updated ghettoVCB documentation
  • ghettoVCB going forward will now be version tracked via github and previous releases will not be available for download


Fixes:

  • Updated absolute sym link path for RSYNC_LINK variable to relative path
  • Enhanced logging and details on warning/error messages

 

Big thanks to Alain Spineux and his contributions to the ghettoVCB script and helping with debugging and testing.

 


09/28/10 -


Enhancements:

 

  • Additional email support for Microsoft IIS and email debugging functionality (Experimental Support)
  • ghettoVCB PID is now captured in the logs
  • Rsync support, please take a look at the above documentation for Rsync Support (Experimental Support)


Fixes:

 

  • Fixed a few typos in the script
  • Trapping SIG 13

 

 


 

07/27/10 -


Enhancements:

 

  • Support for emailing backup logs (Experimental Support)

 

 


 

07/20/10 -


Enhancements:

 

  • Support for vSphere 4.1 (ESX and ESXi)
  • Additional logging information for debugging purposes

 

 


 

05/12/10 -


Enhancements:

 

  • Thanks to user Rodder who submitted a patch for a workaround  to handle the NFS I/O issue. The script will check to see if the return  code of the "rm" operation for VMs that are to be rotated. If the return  code has not returned right away, we may be running into the NFS I/O  issue, the script will not sleep and check perodically to see if NFS  volume is responsive and then continue to the next VM for backup.


Fixes:

 

  • Resolved the problem when trying to specify ghettoVCB global configuration file with the fullpath

 

 


 

05/11/10 -

 

 

  • Updated useful links to 2 utilties that were written by users for ghettoVCB

 

 


 

05/05/10 -


Fixes:

 

  • Resolved an issue where VMs with spaces were not being properly rotated. Thanks to user chrb for finding the bug

 

 


 

04/24/10 -


Enhancements:

 

  • Added the ability to include an exclusion list of VMs to not backup


Fixes:

 

  • Resolved persistent NFS configuration bug due to the addition of the global ghettoVCB conf

 

 


 

04/23/10 -


Fixes:

 

  • Resolved a bug in the VM naming directory which may not delete backups properly

 

 


 

04/20/10 -

 

 

  • Support for global ghettoVCB configuration file. Users no longer  need to edit main script and can use multiple configuration files based  on certain environment configurations
  • Ability to backup all VMs residing on a specific host w/o specifying VM list
  • Implemented simple locking mechenism to ensure only 1 instance of ghettoVCB is running per host
  • Updated backup directory structure - rsync friendly. All backup VM  directories will now have the format of "VMNAME-YYYY-MM-DD_HH_MM_SS"  which will not change once the backup has been completed. The script  will keep N-copies and purge older backups based on the configurations  set by the user.
  • Additional logging and final status output has been added to the  script to provide more useful error/warning messages and an additoinal  status will be printed out at the end of each backup to provide an  overall report


Big thanks goes out to the community for the suggested features and to those that submitted snippet of their modifications.


 

03/27/10 -

 

  • Updated FAQ #0-1 & #25-29 for common issues/questions.
  • For those experiencing NFS issue, please take a look at FAQ #29
  • Re-packaged ghettoVCB.sh script within a tarball (ghettoVCB.tar.gz)  to help assist those users having the "Windows affect" when trying to  execute the script

 


 

02/13/10 -


Updated FAQ #20-24 for common issues/questions.      Also included a new section about our "personal" NFS configuration and setup.


 

01/31/10 -


Fix the crontab section to reflect the correct syntax + updated FAQ #17,#18 and #19 for common issues.


 

11/17/09 -


The following enhancements and fixes have been implemented in this  release of ghettoVCB. Special thanks goes out to all the ghettoVCB BETA  testers for providing time and their environments to test features/fixes  of the new script!

Enhancements:

 

  • Individual VM backup policy
  • Include/exclude specific VMDK(s)
  • Logging to file
  • Timeout variables
  • Configur snapshot memory/quiesce
  • Adapter format
  • Additional logging + dryrun mode
  • Support for both physical/virtual RDMs

Fixes:

  • Independent disk awareE
Attachments
Comments

It moves the VM's VMDK(s) to the backup datastore, it does not matter if the VMs disk is spread across multiple datastores. The way it's stored in the final backup is if the original disk reside on multiple datastores, the backup folder will have a directory for each of the datastore and the disk will be backed up into that directory.

I would highly recommend trying the script out on a dummy/test VM to see what the script is capable of.

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/

vGhetto Script Repository

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

I think there has been quite a bit of confusion on Thin Provisioning, not only with this script which has supported this feature for awhile but also in the general forums.

Within the guestOS, it may show free/unsused space but it does not mean that blocks have not been allocated in the past that could have used up more space than it's showing. Remember, when you delete something, you're just not referencing it anymore, it's still there. Blocks within the OS needs to be zeroed out and this is explained in detail from Mr. 007 himself Duncan Epping at: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/07/31/storage-vmotion-and-moving-to-a-thin-provisioned-disk/

Thin provisioning does work using vmkfstools but you need to ensure you've zeroed out any unused blocks before actually see this when trying to backup or even convert a VMDK.

Hopefully this clears things up

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/

vGhetto Script Repository

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

Hi,

i am using ghettoVCB4i.sh on ESXi 4.0.0 171294 and have some problemes with white spaces in VMs names.

While executing the Script i get the following errors:

ls: /vmfs/volumes/Storagesrv01_backups//itorga: No such file or directory

ls: backuptrigger: No such file or directory

ls: /vmfs/volumes/Storagesrv01_backups//dnie: No such file or directory

ls: workstation: No such file or directory

Any ideas?

Tanks, Stephan

Hi William,

Thanks for such a great script!

Were using it in an ESXi 3.5 environment. I have presented 380GB iSCSI storage to the host as a datastore.

Ive used Starwind to create the iSCSI target.

When I run the script I get:

/bin # ./ghettoVCB4i.sh servers.txt

Invalid desination disk format 'zeroedthick'

Removing snapshot from (servername)

The remove snapshot hangs.

There are no lingering snapshots or backups on the server Im testing.

Ive tried changing the format output but get same message with relevent storage type name instead of zeroedthick.

Any clues as to why this is failing?

Thanks,

Perry.

Well one thing that should worry you is Invalid desination disk format 'zeroedthick', it looks like you might have not setup the right destination format. Please take a look at the document for instructions on how to set the output VMDK format (note, it's configured as 1,2,3,4)

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/

vGhetto Script Repository

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

Hi William,

Thanks for such a great script!

Were using it in an ESXi 3.5 environment. I have presented 380GB iSCSI storage to the host as a datastore.

Ive used Starwind to create the iSCSI target.

When I run the script I get:

/bin # ./ghettoVCB4i.sh servers.txt

Invalid desination disk format 'zeroedthick'

Removing snapshot from (servername)

The remove snapshot hangs.

There are no lingering snapshots or backups on the server Im testing.

Ive tried changing the format output but get same message with relevent storage type name instead of zeroedthick.

Any clues as to why this is failing?

Thanks,

Perry.

Spaces in a VM name is bad! Smiley Wink

Anyway, I think I know is wrong and I just uploaded a new revision of ghettoVCB4i.sh which should fix the issue.

Here is a sample run in our development environment:

/vmfs/volumes/4a59c382-f2feee8e-0280-005056825b84 # ./ghettoVCB4i.sh backuplist
################## Starting backup for ghettoVCB4i-test-vm-backup ... #####################
Destination disk format: VMFS zeroedthick
Cloning disk '/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/ghettoVCB4i-test-vm-backup/ghettoVCB4i-test-vm-backup.vmdk'...
Clone: 100% done.
#################### Completed backup for ghettoVCB4i-test-vm-backup! ####################

################## Starting backup for itorga backuptrigger ... #####################
Destination disk format: VMFS zeroedthick
Cloning disk '/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/itorga backuptrigger/itorga backuptrigger.vmdk'...
Clone: 100% done.
#################### Completed backup for itorga backuptrigger! ####################

################## Starting backup for dnie workstation ... #####################
Destination disk format: VMFS zeroedthick
Cloning disk '/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/dnie workstation/dnie workstation.vmdk'...
Clone: 100% done.
#################### Completed backup for dnie workstation! ####################

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/

vGhetto Script Repository

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

Thank you! There are no more error messages.

Has anybody seen this message?

ls: /vmfs/volumes/raid/bktst1/bktst1-Snapshot148.vmem.MULTILOCK: No such file or directory

However, backup gets done (snapshots are created and deleted successfully and the disk image can be added to the inventory)

so I guess ESXi is to blame rather than the script.

Backup log file containing no information problem

The problem is in the Windows batch file. Do something like this and it will work:

"C:\Program Files\PuTTY\plink.exe" root@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx -pw MyPassword "/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/ghettoVCB/ghettoVCB4i.sh /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/ghettoVCB/backup_list > /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/ghettoVCB/backuplog.txt &"

nohup is the problem

Hi,

I'm trying to get the script up and runing and already took some hurdles but now I'm getting the following error while trying to backup first vm :

Failed to open '/vmfs/....mydisk.vmdk' file : failed to lock the file ( 16392 )

I have ESXi 4.0. The VM I'm trying to backup is located on a separate NFS box ( netgear readynas pro ). The vm is not powered on.

Any ideas ?

thx

Resolved: The VM I tried to backup as test was actually booted on the main ESXi host ! ( Oops..).

When I use one that is not in use, the script runs correctly.

Dirk

Is anyone else getting the ^M characters on the downloaded script? I downloaded it onto my NFS share and when I open it up in VI from ESXi, it shows all the lines have the ^M characters in them - it has never been opened on Windows. It is the script straight from this website. Otherwise, any ideas on removing them?

Should mention it is the ghettoVCB.sh script.

I'm using ESXi and I was using one NFS datastore for backups successfully. I recently switched the NFS storage to a new server, but I'm getting an error. I've tried doing just one server at a time, from 3 different esxi boxes, but it always fails after a few minutes. Are there any logs I can check to get a better idea of what's happening, or whether this is a network issue? thanks. Here is what I get:

/vmfs/volumes/4a6efadf-c0cc9be4-7146-000d601a03f2 # ./ghettoVCB4i.sh vmbackups

1. Taking backup snapshot for myserver... ################

Destination disk format: VMFS thin-provisioned

Cloning disk '/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/myserver/myserver.vmdk'...

Clone: 66% done.Failed to clone disk : Input/output error (327689).

Removing snapshot from myserver...

ls: /vmfs/volumes/VM_Backups/myserver: Input/output error

1. Completed backup for myserver! ####################

Start time: Thu Aug 13 19:02:33 UTC 2009

End time: Thu Aug 13 19:22:47 UTC 2009

Duration : 20.23 Minutes

Completed backing up specified Virtual Machines!

One other note:

I am getting an error saying I am not running 3.5 or 4. (I am running 3.5.0, 158869).

It appears that modifying the version check in the script to use print $5 instead of print $4 has fixed the problem.

dos2unix.org works good to remove the ^M characters.

This should not be the case, I've downloaded the most recent version directly to the ESX(i) host several times and it's been fine. Are you using ESXi 3.5 or ESXi 4.0? With 4.0, it comes with 'curl' and you can donwload it to the host directly.

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/

vGhetto Script Repository

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

This is due to a network connectivity issue, ensure you're not saturating your NFS link. Take a look at this VMware KB: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2116375

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/

vGhetto Script Repository

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

I am using 3.5, so I am downloading it on a Windows host NFS share (not opening it).

I had the old script working fine, but am just upgrading to support my future 4 upgrade. Using that website, I did get it to work, just wanted to make sure the file on the server was correct. I'll just chalk it up to my Windows machine somehow.

Which script is giving you this issue? I think this was fixed in the latest ghettoVCB.sh

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/

vGhetto Script Repository

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

It's good if you're downloading from this VMTN document.

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/

vGhetto Script Repository

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

Hi

I am using your script to backup thin provisioned disks to an NFS on a windows machine however when they are backed to the nfs datastore they switch to flat full size vmdk files. I have tried the sdelete script as suggested to zero out all the data and also created new virtual machines however it still does the same. Is this set-up supported or is there anything I could be doing wrong.

Thanks

What version of ESX(i) are you running and how big is the VMDK allocated and how much is actually being consumed from the guestOS perspective? afaik, when transferring to NFS datastore, it'll alaways be thin provisioned. One other thing I would double check is to check the NFS datastore free space before the backup and then after and see if it's changed, even if the VMDK shows the full size when doing 'ls -lha'

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/

vGhetto Script Repository

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

Is there a modification where we can backup other vmdk in a vm and skipping only rdm disk instead of skipping the whole vm.

It was ghettoVCB.sh downloaded from above on 8/13/09.

You've only answered the first question .... what about the rest?

What version of ESX(i) are you running and how big is the VMDK allocated and how much is actually being consumed from the guestOS perspective? afaik, when transferring to NFS datastore, it'll alaways be thin provisioned. One other thing I would double check is to check the NFS datastore free space before the backup and then after and see if it's changed, even if the VMDK shows the full size when doing 'ls -lha'

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/

vGhetto Script Repository

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

I would like to propose the addition of a RUN_AFTER variable. The ability to serialize operations is invaluable.

Example: After the first set of backups you need another that backs up to a different destination and you want to append the output to the same log. After the final backup, you want to sendmail the log content. etc.

The current as of 8/16 script checks the ESXi version. It appears to reject ESXi 3.5 or 4.

Also I have a three disk VM. The vmx file contains the path (/vmfs/volumes/9d044c9e-6965e94b etc) to the original third disk. The third disk was cloned to the 9d044c9e-6965e94b folder within the backup folder. I will run it again to make sure.

You can easily create something similar by setting up a cronjob that executes a file that contains the various backups that you've defined, which can be in a sequential order which accomplishes what you're looking for. This is not a backup request but a scheduling request.

e.g.

cat my_backups
/root/ghettoVCB.sh /root/backuplist1
/root/ghettoVCB.sh /root/backuplist2
/root/ghettoVCB.sh /root/backuplist3

and my_backups is what would be in your cronjob, this assumes you want the various backups to kick off one after a another.

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/

vGhetto Script Repository

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

The code check might be denying 3i, but 4i is working. I'll have a fix for the string later this evening.

What version of ESX(i) 3.5 and 4.0 are you using?

Can you please output the following for ALL ESX(i) host's you're using the script against by doing the following"

vmware -v

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/

vGhetto Script Repository

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

I noticed it on 4 with the latest patches. Sorry I can't get to the 4 server right now.

on the 3 server VMware ESX Server 3i 3.5.0 build-120505

Not my server but I will update and re run.

Just updated the server.

VMware ESX Server 3i 3.5.0 build-176894

/vmfs/volumes/4d074c9e-6965e94b/scripts # ./ghettoVCB.sh backup.daily

You're not running ESX(i) 3.5+ or 4.0+!

ESX_VERSION=$(vmware -v | awk '{print $3}') Should be print $5

Yes, I'm aware of the 3i issue and I'll have an update later this evening. I'll still be using $3 but doing a different check for 3i since with 4i, they've gone back to the version number.

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/

vGhetto Script Repository

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

I have a vm with 2 vmdks one of them is a raw disk , how can I only skip that disk instead of skipping the whole vm ?

A terrific script lamw. thanks very much for posting. I am using the latest script and cannot get it to backup BOTH VMDKs for a VM. The script will always backup the 'myvmname.vmdk' but not the 'myvmname_1.vmdk'. After injecting some echo's in the script I have learning the following:

The VMDKS_FOUND variable returns the follwoing: scsi0:0.filename scsi0:1.filename ide0:0.filename

obviously it is seeing both scsi stores at this point

However the loop 'for DISK in $;' only ever iterates once

if I echo the DISK variable I get (on seperate lines)

scsi0:0.filename

scsi0:1.filename

ide0:0.filename

>Could it be that the script is seeing DISK as a string rather than an array and therefore only looping once?

if this is occuring the following line:

SCSI_ID='echo ${DISK%%.*}'

will just bite off the first 'scsi0:0' from the string which explains why the script works for the first VMDK

Appreciate any thoughts/comments/suggestions

This is a known issue, I'll be pushing a fix later this week. Sorry for the inconvenience. The reason this is occurring is due to a variable declaration that is not defined within the script and this definition is crucial to the looping of the VMDK(s) within the script. If you would like to remediate this yourselves, you can edit the script and add the following to line 193:

original code:

IFS='
'

modified code:

ORIG_IFS=${IFS}
IFS='
'

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/

vGhetto Script Repository

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

Thanks William - this appears to work perfectly!

Appreciate your time in posting

Anyone know why I would get a Your not running ESX(i) 3.5 or 4.0 when running the ghetoVCB.sh script. I am running Esxi 3.5 update 176894? This should work right?

Yes, see comments above:

DSTAVERT says: in response to: DSTAVERT

ESX_VERSION=$(vmware -v | awk '{print $3}') Should be print $5

That did not work, I still get:

ghettoVCB.sh: ghettoVCB.sh: 460 : 3i: not found

You're not running ESX(i) 3.5+ or 4.0+

I made the change to the script above

any assistance is greatly appreciated

The logic regarding the version check is as the following:

Pre-ESX(i) 4.0, the text would read something like the following when executing vmware -v "VMware ESX Server 3.5.0 build-163429", to get the major release you'll print out column #4

Post-ESX(i) 4.0, VMware decided to rebrand their hypervisor and remove the word Server from vmware -v and if you run this on 4.0 box you'll get "VMware ESX 4.0.0 build-164009" and as you can see, you'll need to now print out column #3

This gets interesting as with 3i, the version was not 3.5.0 but "3i" and again with 4i, this was not the case and we're back to just "4.0.0".

I have 4 ESX systems I use to verify/test this script agains, unless this oddity is occuring in another release, I've tested this against:

ESX 3.5u4

ESXi 3.5u4

ESX 4.0

ESXi 4.0

and they all sucessfully pass the check and execute backups.

Let me explain the logic, so everyone can understand, since others are thinking we need to print out other columns which is not the case:

First off, I check for 4.0.0 which uses col #3, since both ESX and ESXi 4.0 use the same version (no 4i crap), I first see if it's 4.0. If it's not, then I assume it's running 3.5 which can be any of the various flavor/updates + ESXi, in which case, it's column #4. I redefine the ESX_VERSION variable to capture the new version and then check for either 3.5.0 (classic ESX 3.5) or 3i (ESXi) and this should cover all the use cases.

	ESX_VERSION=$(vmware -v | awk '{print $3}')
        if [ "${ESX_VERSION}" == "4.0.0" ]; then
	        VER=4
        else
		ESX_VERSION=$(vmware -v | awk '{print $4}')
		if [[ "${ESX_VERSION}" == "3.5.0" || "${ESX_VERSION}" == "3i" ]]; then
			VER=3
		else
			echo "You're not running ESX(i) 3.5+ or 4.0+!"
                	exit
		fi
        fi

This has nothing to do with the brackets/etc. Generally if you're comparing 1 value, a single set of brackets is fine and if you're doing && or || than you'll need a double set.

If for whatever reason people are still running into this issue, can you please provide the actual update you're running and please please please, post what YOUR system shows when running vmware -v. I've noticed everyone is trying to help and provide a fix, but I need to understand exactly what is going on and what version YOU ARE running.

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/

vGhetto Script Repository

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

Hi William,

vmware -v outputs VMware ESX Server 3i 3.5.0 build-153875

Code i'm running looks like


	ESX_VERSION=$(vmware -v | awk '{print $3}')
	if [; then
		VER=4
	else
		ESX_VERSION=$(vmware -v | awk '{print $4}')
		if [ || [; then
			VER=3
		else
			echo "You're not running ESX(i) 3.5+ or 4.0+!"
			exit
		fi
	fi

Your logic is bang on here. I suspect the issue lies in the shell variable expansion.

TIA

dali

  • Now i only need to figure out how to make the code show up properly...

Can you please wrap your text output in \

 tags and actually do the following instead:

sh -x ./ghettoVCB.sh

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: http://engineering.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware/

vGhetto Script Repository

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

http://twitter.com/lamw

If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful".

Unmodified script outputs following:

/scripts # sh -x ghettoVCB1.sh backup_list
+ VM_BACKUP_VOLUME=/vmfs/volumes/backup/tempest
+ VMDK_OUTPUT_FORMAT=1
+ VM_BACKUP_ROTATION_COUNT=3
+ date +%F
+ VM_BACKUP_DIR_NAMING_CONVENTION=2009-08-19
+ POWER_VM_DOWN_BEFORE_BACKUP=0
+ ENABLE_HARD_POWER_OFF=0
+ ITER_TO_WAIT_SHUTDOWN=4
+ ENABLE_COMPRESSION=0
+ ENABLE_NON_PERSISTENT_NFS=0
+ UNMOUNT_NFS=0
+ NFS_SERVER=172.30.0.195
+ NFS_MOUNT=/nfsshare
+ NFS_LOCAL_NAME=nfs_storage_backup
+ NFS_VM_BACKUP_DIR=mybackups
+ DEVEL_MODE=1
+ IS_4I=0
+ [ ! -f /bin/bash ]
+ sanityCheck 1
+ NUM_OF_ARGS=1
+ [ ! 1 == 1 ]
+ [ -f /usr/bin/vmware-vim-cmd ]
+ [ -f /bin/vim-cmd ]
+ VMWARE_CMD=/bin/vim-cmd
+ VMKFSTOOLS_CMD=/sbin/vmkfstools
+ vmware -v
+ awk {print $3}
+ ESX_VERSION=Server
+ [ Server == 4.0.0 ]
+ vmware -v
+ awk {print $4}
+ ESX_VERSION=3i
+ [[ 3i == 3.5.0
sh: missing ]]
+ 3i == 3i ]]
ghettoVCB1.sh: ghettoVCB1.sh: 460: 3i: not found
+ echo You're not running ESX(i) 3.5+ or 4.0+!
You're not running ESX(i) 3.5+ or 4.0+!
+ exit

Sorry to double post here, but I seem to fail at editing Smiley Sad

Currently running code

	ESX_VERSION=$(vmware -v | awk '{print $3}')
	if [ "${ESX_VERSION}" == "4.0.0" ]; then
		VER=4
	else
		ESX_VERSION=$(vmware -v | awk '{print $4}')
		if [ "${ESX_VERSION}" == "3.5.0" ] || [ "${ESX_VERSION}" == "3i" ]; then
			VER=3
		else
			echo "You're not running ESX(i) 3.5+ or 4.0+!"
			exit
		fi
	fi

outputs:

+ VM_BACKUP_VOLUME=/vmfs/volumes/backup/tempest
+ VMDK_OUTPUT_FORMAT=1
+ VM_BACKUP_ROTATION_COUNT=3
+ date +%F
+ VM_BACKUP_DIR_NAMING_CONVENTION=2009-08-19
+ POWER_VM_DOWN_BEFORE_BACKUP=0
+ ENABLE_HARD_POWER_OFF=0
+ ITER_TO_WAIT_SHUTDOWN=4
+ ENABLE_COMPRESSION=0
+ ENABLE_NON_PERSISTENT_NFS=0
+ UNMOUNT_NFS=0
+ NFS_SERVER=commander.swerve.co.nz
+ NFS_MOUNT=/nfsshare
+ NFS_LOCAL_NAME=nfs_storage_backup
+ NFS_VM_BACKUP_DIR=mybackups
+ DEVEL_MODE=1
+ IS_4I=0
+ [ ! -f /bin/bash ]
+ sanityCheck 1
+ NUM_OF_ARGS=1
+ [ ! 1 == 1 ]
+ [ -f /usr/bin/vmware-vim-cmd ]
+ [ -f /bin/vim-cmd ]
+ VMWARE_CMD=/bin/vim-cmd
+ VMKFSTOOLS_CMD=/sbin/vmkfstools
+ vmware -v
+ awk {print $3}
+ ESX_VERSION=Server
+ [ Server == 4.0.0 ]
+ vmware -v
+ awk {print $4}
+ ESX_VERSION=3i
+ [ 3i == 3.5.0 ]
+ [ 3i == 3i ]
+ VER=3
+ [ 0 -eq 1 ]
+ [ ! -f ]
+ whoami
+ [ ! root == root ]
+ ghettoVCB backup_list
+ VM_INPUT=backup_list
+ date
+ START_TIME=Wed Aug 19 00:38:32 UTC 2009
*snip*
Completed backing up specified Virtual Machines

I've had less trouble fixing the problem than working out how to use the forums Smiley Happy Thanx again for the excellent script.

dali

The output for my version

VMware ESX Server 3i 3.5.0 build-120505

3.5 is in the fifth column not fourth. It could be that VMware is "messin witcha".

That's precisely why the code checks for both "3.5.0" (4th column on ESX) and "3i" (4th column on ESXi) Smiley Happy

The code didn't check for 3i and 3.5. When I reported a problem on the 16th the code read

if ; then VER=3

I was just going by the changelog date and assumed it hadn't changed.

My apologies for thinking that William couldn't count. Smiley Wink

Version history
Revision #:
3 of 3
Last update:
‎07-06-2021 07:20 AM
Updated by:
 
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