Backup VMs on esxi

steinooo

steinooo

steinooo

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Hi all,

I wonder if anyone has any advice on how to backup vms running on a 4.1 Esxi host please?

I assumed I could use veeam but I just read vmware stopped letting 3rd parties offering solutions for esxi?

I have no nas/usb/san but can buy one (nas/usb preferred)

Thanks
 
An important distinction to make is that the licensed version of ESXi is supported, it's only the free version that has the backup API restrictions

There is nothing stopping you using any methods to backup VM's that would work on a physical server.
You could just have a scheduled xcopy job to transfer the data elsewhere (a NAS, another server, etc), or install a tape backup agent and back the data up to tape on another server.

I believe you can even backup to a locally attached tape drive using the passthrough functions, but I've not done it and it sounds like it would be overkill in your case.
 
Little_Crow said:
An important distinction to make is that the licensed version of ESXi is supported, it's only the free version that has the backup API restrictions

There is nothing stopping you using any methods to backup VM's that would work on a physical server.
You could just have a scheduled xcopy job to transfer the data elsewhere (a NAS, another server, etc), or install a tape backup agent and back the data up to tape on another server.

I believe you can even backup to a locally attached tape drive using the passthrough functions, but I've not done it and it sounds like it would be overkill in your case.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this. Firstly I will determine for sure whether or not the version is free or licensed.

Secondly, all my VMs are Windows, and I was rather hoping for an automated Hypervisor layer solution to achieve this. If the license is indeed free, are you suggesting that a VM layer backup solution may be the best way to go?
 
i have used ca arcserve, latest version 16, not sure if it works with free esxi. But it works well with esx 4.

At the one site we have we use a vmware converter and a script that copies them directly to a server. it uses the vcbmounter and the virtual center machine.
 
thanks guys, I'm quite happy to pay as much as is required.

Do the ESXi level solutions you use provide intelligence to realise what has changed since a full backup of the VM in order to utilise incrementals thereafter?
 
steinooo said:
If the license is indeed free, are you suggesting that a VM layer backup solution may be the best way to go?
Click to expand...

It's worth checking out the script Swarfega linked to, it seems like it will do what you are looking to achieve.

Without knowing what your servers are doing it'd be hard to advise further. Full image backups are great if the server is hosed, but restoring a single deleted file that someone needs immediately becomes much harder.

You may find a mix of strategies is needed, on some of our servers we backup an image of the C: drive regularly using vRanger, but for the data drives we use a traditional backup agent.
 
groen said:
I don't think it does incremental because it just generally copies the vmdk and config files directly to the backup medium.
Click to expand...

I thought there may be a block level backup option. I can understand why not though as I'm not dealing with a SAN here. Just local storage.

Little_Crow said:
It's worth checking out the script Swarfega linked to, it seems like it will do what you are looking to achieve.
Click to expand...

It looks good, but am I right in thinking it's simply a pointer to get a NFS volume somewhere, and set up that script to point to it and back up to it? If so, this may be just what I'm after, with a NAS presenting it's storage as NFS? What are your thoughts?

Little_Crow said:
Without knowing what your servers are doing it'd be hard to advise further. Full image backups are great if the server is hosed, but restoring a single deleted file that someone needs immediately becomes much harder.

You may find a mix of strategies is needed, on some of our servers we backup an image of the C: drive regularly using vRanger, but for the data drives we use a traditional backup agent.
Click to expand...

Lotus Notes, Domain Controller, File Server, SCCM secondary server. The only thing that may put me off doing VMDK file backups is the Lotus Notes one as I don't know how that works.
 
On further reflection, this may be better, it seems pretty well regarded, and also seems like it does get updated by the creator.
I'm not sure that these scripts allow incrementals and differentials to be performed - you'd be looking at something like veeam or vranger for that as well as the pre-requisite licensing for esxi.

steinooo said:
Lotus Notes, Domain Controller, File Server, SCCM secondary server. The only thing that may put me off doing VMDK file backups is the Lotus Notes one as I don't know how that works.
Click to expand...

Can't really speak for Lotus Notes, but one thing I do know from experience is that you don't want to do image backups of a DC.
Our DC would just lockup during the process and require a reboot - and I wouldn't have liked to recover from the backup after that any way.


It sounds like you are willing to spend money doing this properly, so I would probably go for ESXi licensing and vranger or veeam.
You'll need a physical server to write image backups to, and then a way of taking the backups off-site.
I prefer writing to tape, but others might suggest external hard disks - either works.
 
Little_Crow said:
On further reflection, this may be better, it seems pretty well regarded, and also seems like it does get updated by the creator.
I'm not sure that these scripts allow incrementals and differentials to be performed - you'd be looking at something like veeam or vranger for that as well as the pre-requisite licensing for esxi.
Click to expand...

thanks for that, yes vcbghetto does keep appearing in my research.....I feel my company wouldn't think this is the 'correct' approach though

Can't really speak for Lotus Notes, but one thing I do know from experience is that you don't want to do image backups of a DC.
Our DC would just lockup during the process and require a reboot - and I wouldn't have liked to recover from the backup after that any way.
Click to expand...

right, but do you think veeam would cope with dc backups better?

It sounds like you are willing to spend money doing this properly, so I would probably go for ESXi licensing and vranger or veeam.
You'll need a physical server to write image backups to, and then a way of taking the backups off-site.
I prefer writing to tape, but others might suggest external hard disks - either works.
Click to expand...

hold the phone. Do you mean to say that the way these modern backup tools work is to backup to another host? There's no way to backup just to a NAS etc?

thanks for all the help
 
steinooo said:
1) right, but do you think veeam would cope with dc backups better?

2) hold the phone. Do you mean to say that the way these modern backup tools work is to backup to another host? There's no way to backup just to a NAS etc?
Click to expand...

1) Maybe, a quick google suggests that it does.
I haven't looked into it in the 3 years since then as we use a backup agent to backup our AD, and have enough physical DC's in other locations that losing our virtual DC's wouldn't matter immediately.
The Microsoft recommendation, FWIW, is 'Run Windows Server Backup in the guest operating system. '
If you have only the one DC, then you'll need to test what happens with Veeam.

2) You can write the backups to pretty much any fileshare or FTP site whether that be on a NAS, server, or 'cloud'.
What you definitely need to do is have the backups taken off site somehow, I prefer tape, which you'd really need a server for, but this could also act as another DC.
Some people like to use external HDD's which will work fine on either a NAS or a server.
 
This is actually a subject i'm interested in, as i have a similar problem.

what about moving the vm storage to a NAS/SAN, but running the VM over 1gig/fiber network cards to/from the esxi server.
i.e. the storage is on the nas but all the ram and processing is on the esxi

then you should be able to block replicate to another NAS/San
and backups from the SAN/NAS side.

it should be easyer to backup the VM from a NAS/SAN than the ESXI storage i'd think?

ghettoVCB.sh is the most well established from may past efforts and seems to have become a lot more easier to use now to. so well worth a try

one other question what down time if any can be afforded to the process?
 
If you're not planning to do it 'on the cheap', I'll second Quest vRanger or Veeam Backup & Replication as being pretty reliable and worth the money. Both include features to reduce backup size by only getting the data and not 'white space' along with incrementals/differentials.

We currently use two vRanger servers at separate sites for 40-50 VMs a night and around 400 on a weekend and they don't give us much trouble.
 
Little_Crow said:
people like to use external HDD's which will work fine on either a NAS or a server.
Click to expand...
oh! I didn't realise you could get NAS devices with externally removable hdds! Will look into those

Emo_hug said:
This is actually a subject i'm interested in, as i have a similar problem.

what about moving the vm storage to a NAS/SAN, but running the VM over 1gig/fiber network cards to/from the esxi server.
i.e. the storage is on the nas but all the ram and processing is on the esxi

then you should be able to block replicate to another NAS/San
and backups from the SAN/NAS side.

it should be easyer to backup the VM from a NAS/SAN than the ESXI storage i'd think?

ghettoVCB.sh is the most well established from may past efforts and seems to have become a lot more easier to use now to. so well worth a try

one other question what down time if any can be afforded to the process?
Click to expand...

I do like the sounds of ghettovcb, and obviously the cheaper the better.

I think I could shutdown the host every night between 0100 and 0500 if necessary which if I go down the NAS route with 1gb nics should be plenty
 
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