Doing hot backups?

[AdamESX]

Hey guys,

I have a few boxes running Esxi. I was wondering if you could SSH into the machine and copy out a live running machine and then just delete the lock files to have a backup. Or do I need to shutdown the machine then copy out the files? I was looking at Veem FastSCP but it doesn't work with ESXi just yet. I am open to any other options as well.

Thanks!!

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the Forums - You would need to shut down the VM or you could use tools like VCB, vRanger, or esXpress to back a running VM.

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[AdamESX]

So basically I should attempt to copy the virtual machine folder locally and then transfer it off so the machine doesn't have a long downtime due to the transfer?

Thanks!

[TiagoAviz]

Yeah, that centainly won't be as slow as stopping the VM, copying it, then starting it. The downtime will be very long.

I'm currently taking 4 hours to copy a 60gb VM over the network.

[Peter_vm]

Alternatively copy virtual disk files to external NFS datastore.

Copy runs at network speed, not ssh speed. Might be 10 or more times faster.