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EJ72
Contributor
Contributor

ESXi 3.5 as backup to ESX 3.5, no VCB / Vcenter, need backup solution

Our setup is as follows:

Production Server - Dell PE2950, ESX 3.5, local storage

Backup Server - Dell PE2600, ESXi 3.5, local storage

Our team has been looking for weeks for a vendor who provides a backup system that is compatible with ESXi. Basically in the event of a hardware failure on the ESX box we want to be able to power up the VMs on the backup ESXi box. Purchasing hardware for shared storage is not an option ($$$). Purchasing an ESX 3.5 license for the backup server is not an option ($$$). We have tried different iSCSI "emulators" for shared storage but the performance difference between using local storage on the ESX box and using shared storage via iSCSI was horrible, all this on a dedicated gigabit network.

What we want to do, if possible, is have the VMs backed up from the local storage on the ESX server directly to the local storage on the ESXi server. Ideally we would run a full backup copy each night and then an incremental backup copy once or twice during the day. The closest solution we would find is VMX by TriLead. Needless to say this product is very slow, during a test run copying a 20GB VM from ESX to ESXi over an isolated gigabit network took almost 2 hours. This is not acceptable when we have 7 VMs to back up, each over 30GB in size. Currently we are only backing up the data in the VMs via MS DPM.

Can anyone guide me in the right direction? I do not want a script; we need a product with vendor support. Alternatively if you have another idea on how to accomplish our request (using ESXi free as a backup to ESX) any insight is appreciated.

Thank you.

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MHAV
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Vizioncore vRanger 3 support ESXi - vRanger 4 doesn't support ESXi by now.

Regards

Michael Haverbeck

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Regards Michael Haverbeck Check out my blog www.the-virtualizer.com
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EJ72
Contributor
Contributor

Unfortunately it does not support direct backup to an ESXi FREE target, you must purchase a VI foundation license for ESXi in order for their product to use ESXi as a target for direct backup (I already contacted them to get this information).

Any other ideas?

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MHAV
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

The only other Idea is to use ESX Console. You can Upload the so called VIMA on your ESXi Server that gives you a ESX Console as the ESX Server does. Then you can use the console commands for backup.

The other way is to use a script from any WIndows Host using SSH to do the backup. Probably the fastest SCP Client is the Free VEEAM FASTSCP Util. FASTSCP

Regards

Michael Haverbeck

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Regards Michael Haverbeck Check out my blog www.the-virtualizer.com
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AndreTheGiant
Immortal
Immortal

You can try some backup product for ESXi:

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1275997#1275997

Or also use the COS of the first server (as written before) to make rsync your your VM.

You can make a snap of your VM, rsync the vmdk file (the delta file will be locked) and then remove the snap.

Andre

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
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lamw
Community Manager
Community Manager

Take a look at:

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

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:

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

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