Thread moved to ESXi forum.

I'm quite new to ESXi myself but maybe i can give you some info.

The filesystem is accessible via VI-Client (datastore browser) or scp (if ssh is enabled). You can copy virtual machine directories this way, it works, but i don't think it is supported. Supported backup methods are VCB (but you need a foundation licence for that), traditional backup from within the virtual machine, and vmkfstools (commandline) to make copies of virtual disks.

NFS-shares can also be used as datastores, so you could copy directly from there if the virtual machines live there, or use an NFS-Datastore as backup space.

Edit: I forgot one method that looks quite good to me: vmware converter can be used to convert ESXi VMs to VMware Workstation VMs and back. Maybe someone could shed some more light on this topic, what method is recommended (or widely used) to backup VMs from free ESXi.

there are a few vendor products which permit you to backup without VCB. the one which foremost comes to mind is Veeam Backup

http://www.veeam.com/vmware-esx-backup.html

they also have a free "fastscp" program (which is actually a component of veeam backup) that will permit you to do exactly what you do with vmware server. you can shutdown the machine and then use fastscp to copy the VM files out to a local disk and then start the machine back up again.

fastscp is about 50% faster than using just a plain scp.

in order for this to function, however, you will need to enable the ssh service on your ESXi box. there are guides which will show you how to do this.

Hi wizdude,

are you sure about Veeam and fastscp beeing compatible to standalone ESXi without VCB? The statement in their datasheet is:

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"ESXi support

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Veeam Backup 2.0 features limited support for ESXi servers through VCB. You can now back up ESXi servers using the VCB option in the backup wizard. File-level recovery is fully supported for guests running on ESXi, while full image restore is only supported to ESX 3.x servers. Once the guest has been restored to an ESX 3.x server, you can then VMotion the restored machine back to the ESXi server. Replication is also supported with ESXi as a source and ESX 3.x as a target."

This sounds to me like you need VCB to backup and Vmotion and ESX to restore, that would be a foundation and a VC licence needed.

I also tried fastscp, but i didn't manage to connect. I looked in their forums and found this:

"Thank you for your interest. No, at the moment FastSCP does not support ESXi." (Posted - 06/16/2008 by Gostev, Veeam Software)

you are correct. the current release does not support ESXi unless you are using it via VCB in conjunction with virtualcenter.

you essentially have the following options:

1. shut down the VM and use WinSCP to make a backup of the VM directory in the datastore. (this does work - i've already tested it)

2. shut down the VM and browse to the datastore from within the VI client and copy the files this way.

3. treat the VM like a physical machine and use a product like Shadowcraft Shadow Protect which will take a bare metal snapshot of the entire VM (with incremental capability) and push it out to a NAS or similar.

i personally have production machines using technique 3 above. this is not specific to either ESX or ESXi since it's a VM agent based backup solution.

i also used this same solution in reverse to perform a physical to virtual migration. some of my production VM's were originally physical machines.

I also tried fastscp, but i didn't manage to connect. I looked in their forums and found this:

"Thank you for your interest. No, at the moment FastSCP does not support ESXi." (Posted - 06/16/2008 by Gostev, Veeam Software)

Have you enabled SSH?

Have you enabled SSH?

Yes ssh is enabled, winscp connects fine.

i've also confirmed this. the latest fastscp locks up when trying to connect to an ESXi host. connecting to an ESX host is fine.

winscp appears to be the best alternative at this time.

Here is what I do... Enable ssh and RCLI then modify the attached script to your environment. You will need a second storage system. I setup an old box with Openfiler and a single 500GB drive (don't need redundancy for daily snapshots). Create a large iscsi LUN and attach it to your ESX servers. I called it Snaphosts.

The script will...Create a list of all VMs in a datastore. One by one it will create a snapshot of the VM then copy the static part of the disk to the snapshots iscsi datastore. You can have the script shutdown or not shut down the VMs depending if you are fine with a crash consistent backup or not. Never had a problem with a crash consistent back yet... Once the backup disk is created it removes the snapshot. The backup disks are created as thin disks to save network bandwidth and the backup window. Been doing the same concept on VMWare Server for over a year and it works great. ESXi was a little more tricky to setup but it works great and with ESXi you can remove snapshots without shutting down the guest!

FYI... Still do file level backups on file storage shares/drives/

Good luck..

Thanks a lot, i've been searching for a script like this but had not found one that worked with ESXi.

The script I posted yesterday had a few issues as I had only been testing it in a R & D environment. I made a few changes and fixed the errors. I am sure there are better ways to do this but with my limited scripting skills this seems to work.

Notes:

You have pass the ESXi hostname username and password via command line or embed it in a shortcut. Or simply modify the script.

The script is not very smart and will try to copy a second disk regardless if there is one or not.

Hi,

"...Enable ssh and RCLI"

ssh is ok, but how to enable RCLI on my ESXI-Server?

Where to put your script then?

Sorry, I'm just new in ESX-Servers.

Thomas

You have to install RCLI on a XP/2003 computer then run the script from that computer.

Note: This script is a work in progress and might need some tweaks for each environment.

Good luck..

In the esxbackup.txt file which values need to be modified to get this to work I have entered username password, esxi server and changed datastore but am getting errors please can you help