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MrSpock77
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎01-24-2009 10:15 AM

Differential backup of full VMs

Hi everybody!

I am trying to find a good and simple backup solution for my first ESXi server. I have read these forums a lot and I have tried to get a grip of solutions like VCB, vRanger, esXpress and Veeam, but with no success. This is what I have:

  • One Dell PE2950 III with local storage (no SAN) and ESXi installed.

  • One physical Windows 2003 server where I want to store the full VM backups.

This is what I want to do:

  • Once a week: Take a snapshot of every VM and copy the full VMs (vmdk) to the backup server.

  • Every night: Copy the changes since the last full VM backup.

With the VCB tool vcbMounter.exe I managed to copy all vmdk's to the backup server in LAN mode, i.e. the "once a week" option. As I use snapshots, the large main vmdk never change, and I think it's unnecessary to copy the same 40 GB file over the network every night. How can I just copy the vmdk's changed since the last snapshot? Which tools do I need? Can this be done without VCB?

Any help would be highly appreciated.

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2 Replies
Lightbulb
Virtuoso
Virtuoso
‎01-24-2009 11:00 AM

For the Full VMDK backup you could try http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-8760

For the incrementals you have a harder problem. I suppose you could use a Central backup server with client software that supports Incrementals by date not archive bit. In this way You do your VMDK backup once a week via the scripted process and a separate backup process backs up changed files based on date. This would be a very clunky hack (If it would even work). You are better off with VCB and a third party backup provider for INCRs.

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nick_couchman
Immortal
Immortal
‎01-26-2009 06:25 AM

The only issue that I can see with this method for the incrementals is that most full Client/Server backup software does not run on ESXi, which is going to make it difficult to get just the changed files off the ESXi host and onto a volume that the backup software can actually read. Unless, of course, you're using an NFS datastore, in which case you could just mount the NFS data store directly on the backup server, and you won't need a script at all.

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