Best Way To Back Up Virtual Machines?

[hillda01]

Hi,

I'm looking for the best way to backup our virtual machines without taking them down.

I'll explain our current setup....

2 x DL380 G3 host's connected to a shared storage - HP MSA500 G2

The 2 ESX boxes are currently running ESX2.5.3 with the Arcserve agent for Linux installed and we are able to connect to these boxes via Arcserve to back them up whilst they are down - but we would like some way of doing it while they are up.

Controlled by VC2

We use Arcserve 11.1 for backing up our Windows boxes etc which works fine.

We do have some ESX3.0.1 boxes as well we would like to back up - I have found a script called Virtual Infrastructure Scripted Backup Utility (VISBU) but not entirely sure what it does and how it works....

All comments are as usual appreciated.

Regards

Dave

[Dave_Mishchenko]

With ESX you can take a snapshot of the VM, which will allow you to make a complete backup of the VM while it is running. If you're looking at a commercial package, then I would suggest www.esxpress.com and www.vizioncore.com. Otherwise, there's a number of links to free scripts that you can use here: http://www.vmware-land.com/Vmware_Links.html.

[hillda01]

I was wondering whether to use Snapshot type method - but didnt know what files it would back up - surely it cant make a copy of the .vmdk file in like seconds especially if its 100gb. I got that script Virtual Infrastructure Scripted Backup Utility (VISBU) from vmware-land just didnt know what it does exactly.....

[hillda01]

Has anyone had any more thoughts on this?

It can be that difficult, I have since tried just doing a cp of the whole directory but that is going to take ages depending on the virtual hdd,s....

[VirtualNoitall]

Hello,

If you are looking for file level backups then you could use any agent based backup tool that you use for physical servers. If you go the file level backup route then have a look at: http://www.vmware.com/products/vi/consolidated_backup.html

If you are looking for a vm by vm based bakcup solution then something like this is what you are after: http://www.esxpress.com/

Hope that helps!

[elfshadow]

I am another fan of the the esXpress software (http://www.esxpress.com/). It makes hot backups of the VMs and can direct the backup to an FTP site or VMFS. They have a trial version that will let you try out the more advanced features. They also have a free version that will allow you to make full backups as well. I believe their latest beta is working on file level backups of the VMs.

For now I use a backup agent in the VM and let that handle my file level backup of the VMs that need it.

[admin]

Hi there, I wrote VISBU, what it does is backup the .vmdk files of VMs on your system - either over the network, or SAN-SAN. Of course the speed of export does rely on the speed of the connection between the source and destintation datastore.

[petedr]

esXpress also now has in Beta File Level Backups (FLBs) so now you can get both the vmdk backups ( Fulls and Deltas ) as well as File Level backups. esXpress is now providing a soup to nuts solution for VMs.

[lholling]

We use vmbk which you can get from http://www.vmts.net

It works well for us to backup multiple VMs on a server or individual ones in either Interactive mode or scripted.

Here are a couple of the scripts that we use with this

vmbk.pl –i –d /mnt/smb/ -s smb=//nw2k3/d\$/vmbk,user=username –l vmbk.log -c –4

This one is for interactive and backup of a VM to an smb mount and it will ask you for a password. It will then enumerate the VMs on the server and offer you a menu selection for backup.

This next one backs up specific VMs on a server and assumes that an smb mount is already present

vmbk.pl –d /mnt/smb/vmbackups/esx-prod –l /mnt/smb/vmbackups/esx-prod/vmbk.log -c –4 -x /vmfs/volumes/PRODVMFS3/VM1/VM1-SRV1.vmx,/vmfs/volumes/PRODVMFS3/VM2/VM2-SRV1.vmx

Hope that this helps

Leonard...

[jfrantz · Accepted solution]

I was using a shell script but it was getting to be a pain. I tried esXpress and love it. It was up and running in a few minutes. Backups are easy and worry-free for me as I don't have to keep tweaking my scripts. A big plus is that PHD is constanly adding great features to esXpress also.

You can download a trial copy from their website www.esxpress.com.

-Jeff