ESXi Backup

[pirata75]

Hi everyone,

I have a big problem.

I'm using ESXi free version and now I cannot backup my virtula machine.

I've tried with vcb, veeam etc etc but no of them seems to work.

Is there anyone that has the same problem and a solution?

Thanks

[weinstein5]

Do you have virtual center set up - I know VCB requires virtual cenetr - what errors do you get?

[Desmo]

The probelm is that most of these products (not VCB) need console access, or ssh access, and ESXi does not have this. I have been waiting for backup products to comeout from the major vendors that support ESXi and I thinkk you will find that announcements will be made at VMWorld in September. I am waiting until after this until I evaluate a good backup solution. Veeeam currently has limited support for ESXi with VCB.

Keep an eye on

www.esxpress.com

www.vizioncore.com

www.platespin.com

www.veeam.com

[ceemour]

vcb works fine and doesnt seem to want a license

[robink]

ssh can be enabled. If you are on a budget you could write a script to do the backups.

Here is what I do...

Take a snapshot of the VM using vmware-cmd.pl

Copy the disk file to another disk file (thin) using vmfstools.pl (using thin minimizes data transfer)

Remove snapshot

copy over vmx file

Done. If you don't shut down the VM you will have a crash-consistant copy which has never been a problem for me.

All done from a Windows workstation using RCLI. Setup a spare openfiler box on old hardware to present a iscsi lun to all ESXi servers for the location to copy the files to.

[wpatton]

Enabling SSH for ESXi is a snap. This link has instructions:

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[pirata75]

Thank you!

But I've enable ssh in my esxi by going into consolle (alt+f1) and editing inedt.conf file decommenting ssh

Unfortunately these doesn't soleve my problem....

[pirata75]

Thank you.

But I've another question for you, anytime I try to execute a .pl script I had back an error message in wich ESXi tell me that the file don't exist!

But I do the right thing....for example for a script named xxxx.pl I write the command ./xxx.pl

I've verifyed that the file has the correct permission .

Any ideas?

[wpatton]

With ESXi you no longer have the perl interpreter local to ESX, that needs to be run with the Remote CLI:

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[pirata75]

thank you!

I'll try it!

[Desmo]

Unless I'm missing something the 'enable ssh' does not work. Even after the server has been rebooted.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

So if you look at the file /etc/inetd.conf, there is no # in from of the ssh line?

[Desmo]

Fixed it my stupidity. Works ok now.