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virtualfish321
Contributor
Contributor

Can I get ESXi to export directories to NFS?

ok, so I'm thinking of a way I can back up my datastores.  My environment:

4 esx 4.1 servers

vcenter 4.1

Compellent SAN

Commvault Simpana 8.0

What I am currently doing with other luns on my san is taking the latest snapshot of the desired Compellent volume and mounting it directly to my Commvault media agent.  Then I have a tape backup scheduled periodically that will back that snapshotted volume to tape, all without touching the actual client the volumes were coming from.

I want to apply this to my vmware datastores as well, but with no way for linux to read the vmfs filesystem, I can make it happen.  So, my crazy idea was to build an ESXi 4.1 server, that's specifically just for mounting volumes and backing things up.  it wouldn't be part of any vcenter or cluster or anything.  I can have my shapshotted luns from the compellent mount to that server and it will read the vmfs file system.  Now, I still need to get those to tape through the media agent somehow.  So, I'm presented with a couple choices:

1.)  do a command similar to the following:

         tar cvf - /vmfs/volumes/cml_os_datastore02/ | ssh user@cvmediaagent "cat > /vmbackup/test/testds1.tar.gz"

Which will create a gzip file of all the machines in the datastore, copying it to the media agent server which can then back it up to tape.  This can work, but is not ideal because it has to copy all that data over the network and then the machines are all contained in the gzip file.

2.)  export the volume that has the snapshot to NFS, then mount that NFS share to the media agent server which can then back that mount point up to tape.  This is what I really want to do, but in looking at the ESXi /etc directory there's no export folder, which of course I'm not surprised.

So...is there any way I can export volumes on ESXi to an NFS share?  If not, can it be done with regular ESX?  I'm sure this sounds ghetto, but I think it's a pretty neat idea to backup the snapshots of the datastore luns.

Thanks for any ideas!

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bulletprooffool
Champion
Champion

Personally, I'd look at using a tool that is designed for the job.

Check out the GhtettoVCB scripts and also consider Veem Backup (if you have budget . . bearing in mind of course that a spare ESX host and license is anyway going to cost you wad of cash)

If you insist on scripting it, try reverese engineering the Ghetto scripts.

Good luck.

One day I will virtualise myself . . .
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