Backups

[jaxislnad]

I have ESXi 3.5 installed and I started the trial of Virtual Center 2.5.

My question is before I proceed to buy the VC, I want to test backups. What is the best / recommended solution for backing up the whole VM, as well as the files so I can do single file / folder restores up to whole VM restores?

Thanks

[gary1012]

What is your backup solution now? There are a number of options but I would check to see if your backup solution integrates with VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB). I would also explore other products such as Vizioncore's vRanger as it provides the functionality you desire.

[jaxislnad]

I use VMServer, I have scripts in place to shut down and backup my VM's.

vRanger does not support ESXi only ESX. They did exactly everything I needed, now I was looking for a vRanger-ish solution for ESXi.

[khughes]

There aren't a lot of options for bulk backups when you're running ESXi, but Veeam backup does support ESXi so you might want to check them out.

• Kyle

[azn2kew]

Frankly, there are several backup solutions out there you can compare such as VCB, esXpress, vRanger and Veeam Backup as well as VISBU freebies from Xtravirt which works really well, depends how your budget looks like those freebies like VCB, esXpress and VISBU works great but depends how much bandwidth or VMs you're looking to backup/restore. If you're already have NetBackup 6.5 in place, you could use VCB as it's free and use NB 6.5 integration module for it. I've used and tested all of these products and found to be very easy using Veeam Backup solution and it does what you need. Check out Edward's comparision charts for details as well and you make the call. I suggest you test out all the solutions and decide from yourself.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[khughes]

I wasn't aware that vRanger and esxpress were ready for ESXi, are you sure about that....

Also the document that was mentioned is located here:

• Kyle

Message was edited by: khughes - added web link to backup document

[Dave_Mishchenko]

I wasn't aware that vRanger and esxpress were ready for ESXi

Neither currently supports ESXi but should by the end of the year.

[jaxislnad]

So what it comes down to is you can have free ESXi, but no backups. I cannot deploy somthing that has no disaster recovery, Im just in awe that there is no easy way to schedule backup jobs that syncs with ESXi.

[khughes]

Im just in awe that there is no easy way to schedule backup jobs that syncs with ESXi.

ESX and ESXi are simular but a different breed. The software companies are using features that are available in ESX but not in ESXi making it not just a simple change in code but a rewrite to make it work. Give it time, they are all working on trying to get out a quality backup solution for ESXi. Like I mentioned before Veeam has a solution for ESXi

• Kyle

[jaxislnad]

Except if you read Veeam closely, although they support backing up ESXi you have to restore it to a ESX server, then use VMotion to move it to a ESXi server.

[jaxislnad]

I have found the solution to backing up ESXi for free. It involves 2 free tools:

1- WinSCP

2- VMware Remote CLI

First thing is to enable SSH on the ESXi server. Read that here:

Instead of messing with restarting services, just reboot the server, its much easier.

Now create a batch file that will shut down the virtual machines you want to backup. From this point on anything in italics is going to be unique to each users system. This is what I use:

C:

cd "C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware VI Remote CLI\Perl\apps\vm"

vmcontrol.pl --vmname NAME --operation poweron --server IP --username user --password PASSWORD

If you have more than one server just add as many as you need I have 8 lines.

Now with the servers off, you can backup the files.

If this is your first time using WinSCP you must manually connect to the machines with the GUI and add the key. Once that's done you can run the script fine. At that point you want to note the file paths for your virtual machines, they start in: /vmfs/volumes

To create the WinSCP script just create a text file and save it in: C:\Program Files\WinSCP

My file looks like this:

option batch on

option confirm on

open user:password@IPAddress

call cp -a "/vmfs/volumes/Disk/VMName" "/vmfs/volumes/Disk1/VMBackup/"

close

open user:password@DiffIP

call cp -a "/vmfs/volumes/Disk/VMName" "/vmfs/volumes/Disk1/VMBackup/"

close

exit

I have two open commands to talk to 2 different ESXi servers. You may have one or more it doesn't matter but when your all done, make sure the last line is exit.

Now that the files are backed up you can restart the virtual machines with a Poweron batch file:

c:

cd "C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware VI Remote CLI\Perl\apps\vm"

vmcontrol.pl --vmname NAME --operation poweron --server IP --username USER --password PASSWORD

Add a line for each server you need to restart.

Now to automate I just used Windows Task Scheduler and added 3 items.

• 1- at 11 pm to run the shutdown.bat

• 2- at 11:15 pm to run the WinSCP

• 3- at 4 am to run the poweron.bat

WinSCP allows many more commands to be run and has great documentation at their site, linked above.

If you have any questions let me know.