ESXi Backup

[jpalmer_ids]

We have recently stood-up an ESXi environment and have been extremely impressed. However, the one thing that limits us from going whole hog w\ the project is the lack of (free) image backup tools. I have just started investigating the various APIs (Powershell, Perl, C#.Net, etc) but have been unable to find a defenitive solution to the question "how do you backup VMs hosted on ESXi". Is there anyone that has a solid receipe that they are willing to share? We are a development shop and wouldn't shy away from a command line and/or Perl and/or .net solution.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

If you are using the free version, you are stuck with the traditional backup from within the VM approach. If this is a for fee version then anything that uses VCB or VCB itself will work just fine. Use of VCB is the approach I would take.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[jpalmer_ids]

Mr Haletky,

Thank your for your response.

I am using the free version (ESXi). When you say "traditional backup from within the VM approach" I assume that you are referring to protecting the data "housed" on the file system of the VM itself. We are backing up this data on our NAS. My inquiry was related to creating a backup of the VM files (the .vmdk, etc.). In looking at the cmdLet's exposed by the VIToolkit and the extensions found on CodePlex. From my breif anlsyis I am left wondering if something like a snapshot / suspend / xcopy of each of the VMs would be possible. Is this possible?

-Justin

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Snapshots are the proper approach, but there is no 'xcopy' capability unless you happen to be using NFS from a Windows system, then yes it 'may' work as you expect.

Snapshot, copy -flat.vmdk, commit snapshot is the proper approach. But if you are NOT using NFS, the copy can not occur as ESXi does not have that capability via the RCLI.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[jpalmer_ids]

We are using Openfiler and NFS....so I am hopeful that this approach will work. Thanks again for your prompt response.