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ChrisInTexas
Contributor
Contributor

Free ESXi Backup Solution for Windows

I have spent the last few days trying to find a free backup solution to the newly free ESXi for windows only enviroments (in particular Windows XP). The solution for me was the following:

1. Installing Windows Services for UNIX (WSFU)

2. Copying the ESXi Server password and group files to Windows

3. Configuring WSFU for accepting ESX Server connections

4. Sharing the Windows folder for NFS compatibility

5. Configuring the ESXi Server to mount the Window NFS Share as Datastore.

6. Setup Backup Script

Attached is the complete steps.

I take NO credit for any of this. This is just a complation of others work formated to suit my needs and felt others could benift from it as I have.

by Jason Mattox from Vizioncore (direct copy of his work, I just added more information to make it work in Windows XP)

(NFS Server port information)

by robink (The backup script)

(ssh on ESXi)

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IT_Architect
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I just had a thought that may have already been considered. To make a long story short, the VI Client messed up my vmdks, and I was able to salvage them by running the VM through the converter to Workstation 6.5 and back to ESXi. However it did not escape my attention that the Workstation vmdk that was created was only 5.5 gigs uncompressed compared to the previous 42 gigs worth of files that came in from ESXi. The conversion to workstation was a lot faster than converting back to ESXi's 36 gig vmdk. We do a lot more backups than restores. If that concept plus compression could be applied to the backup process...

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StuartLittle
Contributor
Contributor

Hello all,

Does anyone have any advice on modifying the Esxibackup.pl script to simply snapshot and backup a single VM server?

Thanks - in anticipation.

Stuart

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lamw
Community Manager
Community Manager

Please try contacting the original author on that script, he/she may not be consistently monitoring this thread.

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

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:

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DSTAVERT
Immortal
Immortal

StuartLittle

If you only need occasional copies for a single machine you can use the current Converter 4.0 tool. It doesn't schedule but you can basically rerun a previous conversion. It is reasonably quick and as an added benefit you can launch the "backup" and verify that it is viable.

-- David -- VMware Communities Moderator
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IT_Architect
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Enthusiast

Does anybody know if you convert to 6.5 while backing up if it preserves the ESXi snapshots?

If you ever want to see "Gigs Fly", and you are copying a VM between local disks or volumes, or moving/renaming a VM on the same volume, use the cp or mv commands at the ESXi command prompt. Volumes show under /vmfs.

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dotcom
Contributor
Contributor

Does anyone know of a backup script that correctly handles the sparse files that ESXi creates?

A sparse file is a file that does not have all of it's space allocated. So for example, if I create a new 8g VM, and I don't install any data on it, it may look like it has 8g of space in use, but in reality it is close to 0. "ls -l" should show the 8g, "du" should show something close to 0 (if you have a real du that reports actual space used).

I tried using ghettoVCB.sh, and while the script works great, it is not correctly handling the sparse files. an empty 8g sparse file should take a couple seconds to cross the network, instead, it is sending 8g of data.

If ghettoVCB were to encapsulate and/or compress the sparse file in a manner that the sparse file was created as a sparse file upon restore, that would be the best solution, and it would reduce the needless bandwidth consumption, pushing gig after gig of 0's across the wire.

If you don't understand what a sparse file is, check out this link:

I have moved 35 real machines into 35 virtual machines. My backups have gone from using 500g to using several terabytes. This is not a compression issue, it is an issue of storing data that should not exist.

And worse, now that non-existant data is real data, the ESXi server has to handle large blocks of 0's that used to not exist because the backups have filled-in what is supposed to be sparse data. This is having a performance impact on the network, and the drives themselves. Before a backup, vmware could clone a system in a couple seconds, and after restoring the backup, the cloning operation takes much longer. We must preserve the sparse files sparse state, otherwise it's not a real backup.

George

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duonglt
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

Have you tried using the sparse option in the ghettoVCB.sh script?

VMware ESX 3.x and ESXi Scripts & Resources:

VMware ESX 3.x and ESXi Scripts & Resources: http://www.engr.ucsb.edu/~duonglt/vmware
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tahmad
Contributor
Contributor

thanks sanbe your script work as a charm,without any problem :smileygrin:

MCSE ,EMCPA
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bones_79
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Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

Ich befinde mich in der Zeit vom 28. März bis zum 13. April nicht im Hause.

Ich werde Ihre Mail nach meiner Rückkehr beantworten.

Bei dringenden Anliegen wenden Sie sich bitte an Herrn Eisenberg.

Mail:

eisenberg@hospital-fritzlar.de

Telefon:

05622 997-7729

Mit freundlichen Gruessen

Martin Bolz

Leiter EDV-Abteilung

Fon: (05622) 997-650

Fax: (05622) 997-654

Mail: bolz@hospital-fritzlar.de

Hospital zum Heiligen Geist

Am Hospital 6

34560 Fritzlar

www.hospital-fritzlar.de

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SNAFU58
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ChrisInTexas,

I don't know if you are still monitoring this thread or not. I was following your directions for using WSFU and NFS to do backups in ESXi. Everything was going well until I got to adding the NFS storage in the VMI Client. I keep getting this error: +"error during the configuration of the host cannot open volume vmfs volumes"+, So I did some searching and found posts saying that to get around this error you needed to allow anonymous access to the NFS folder and give Anonymous Logon Full Control of NTFS permissions. I have done that and now the error I get is "error during the configuration of the host nfs error unable to mount filesystem unable to connect to nfs server"

Any ideas what I may be doing wrong. It seems I am on the verge but cannot get this to work.

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spex
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Guten Tag,

ich bin am 20.04.2009 wieder im Haus.

Bei wichtigen Problemen wenden Sie sich bitte an Herrn Dr. Matthias Weger.

Ihre E-Mail wurde nicht weitergeleitet

Danke

Stefan Holzwarth

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sanbe
Contributor
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I´m not in the office until 14.04.2009. Your E-Mail won´t be forwarded. In urgent cases contact "PTD DataCenter" oi-sd-datacenter-mailbox.ptd@siemens.com

With best regards,

Bernd Sandner

Siemens AG

GIO IT SHS 94

Freyeslebenstr. 1

91058 Erlangen, Germany

Tel.: +49 (9131) 7-35210

Fax: +49 (9131) 7-31537

Mobile: +49 (171) 2296136

mailto:sandner.bernd@siemens.com

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Important notice: This e-mail and any attachment thereof contain corporate proprietary information. If you have received it by mistake, please notify us immediately by reply e-mail and delete this e-mail and its attachments from your system. Thank you.

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Cellolein
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Ich bin bis einschließlich 17.04.09 nicht im Hause. E-Mails werden nicht bearbeitet oder weitergeleitet. In dringenden Angelegenheiten wenden Sie sich bitte an meinen Kollegen Herrn Venker. Email: venker@schmitz-werke.com Telefon: +49 2572 927 0. Über unsere Telefonzentrale werden Sie an Herrn Venker weitergeleitet.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen,

Marcel Ruholl

Schmitz-Werke GmbH + Co. KG

Abteilung EDV

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48282 Emsdetten - Germany

fon: +49 (0) 2572 927-198

fax: +49 (0) 2572 927-9198

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ChrisInTexas
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I am not sure if this will help or not. The attached pics are how I have my windows NFS share and SFU set. One thing I remember that messed me up was that I had to give the logged in user full rights to the folder that I have set as the NFS share.

I am still using it just as I have originally set it up as, to be honest I have not touched it since. Though I am planning to try[ Veeam Backup|http://www.veeam.com/vmware-esx-backup.html] as it is now ESXi capable.

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SNAFU58
Contributor
Contributor

Chris,

I had my SFU and NFS set up the same. But your mention of giving the logged in user full rights got me to thinking.

I had mapped the Unix root account to my domain account which is the account that I am logged in with and is a local admin. It was the "local" admin that got me to thinking so I added a mapping of the root account to my local account on the WSFU machine, and even though I am still logged in with my domain account I can now establish the NFS storage. Seems a bit backwards to me but it works.

Thanks for your help. Now I get to try the script.

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Tonyjansen
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

I'm using the backup script on a esxi server. Yesterday we had a complete server crash. Now i noticed that the script made backups, but that i downloaded a ful flat file and 5 snapshot files of 1 kb. This is the case for all backups.

Is there any way to recover the data, i opened the file with vmware workstation, and it only shows me the orinigal state of the server;, and not the uptodate version

Many thx

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KBuchanan
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Wasn't there some delta files? Each snap creates a delta file and xxxxxxx_0000# numbered file...I cant remember the exact naming format...but there should be more than 1 kb.

Kevin Buchanan

Chief Information Officer

Lexington Memorial Hospital

336-238-4286

kbuchanan@lexmem.org

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IT_Architect
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

With regard to this script, t appears upgrading to ESXi U4 would be a bad move. I would assume methods used in your script would no longer work.

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Tonyjansen
Contributor
Contributor

There are idd snapshot files in the backup, but they are only 1 kb and the originals where 5 to 100 GB. It also seems that the snapshots are always 1 tot 5 and never more than that. Altough i notice that in the datastore that snapshops where going from 1 tot 13.

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lamw
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi IT_Architect,

False, my ghettoVCB.sh will continue to work because it does not rely on the VI API, it's using the unsupported SSH console to initiate it's backups. Let me know if you run into any issues

IMHO it's a bad move to go to ESXi 3.5u4 if you heavily rely on automating configuration or backup process using the RCLI/VI Perl Toolkit/Powershell binding to the VI API, I would probably stay on U3 if you're quite happy with the full r/w access to the VI API.

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

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:

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