Any free vmware backup solutions?

mrbios

mrbios

mrbios

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As per the title really, i need some way of backing up VMware virtual machines without having to shut down the VMs

Ideally free, but if not as cheap as possible!

We currently have backup exec 2010 and the vmware backup license but it's a pile of ****, never works and we've even had some backup exec expert look at it and he still couldn't get it working (waste of money at £80 an hour!) so naturally we're after alternatives now :)
 
You can back up Virtual machines manually by scripting a snapshot prior to backup then backing up the directory your Virtual Machines and snapshots are saved in.

Then when restoring you restore the directories and revert the machines to the snapshot.

Not the most hands off method but with a budget of £0 beggars can't be choosers.
 
What platform? ESX? ESXi? What version? What Licenses do you have within ESX/i?

You can automate backups of snapshots to iSCSI targets using scripting :)

We just use few a cheap off the shelf NAS enclosures that support iSCSI, backup to those and take them (in rotation) offsite.
 
paradigm said:
What platform? ESX? ESXi? What version? What Licenses do you have within ESX/i?

You can automate backups of snapshots to iSCSI targets using scripting :)

We just use few a cheap off the shelf NAS enclosures that support iSCSI, backup to those and take them (in rotation) offsite.
Click to expand...

ESXi hosts and all connected to virtual center standard

Some of them are currently connected by iSCSI connections though i've no experience with scripting things for a vmware environment, any helpful links for that? :)
 
There should be a synopsis of commands on the VMware site. Pretty much anything you can do in the web front end will have a CLI equivalent. Beyond the ESX specific commands, it's just Linux. If you've toyed with Ubuntu server, ESXi CLI administration should be fairly comfortable.
 
not an answer to your question but a monthly snapshot + a daily / weekly backup as if the server was jsut a physical machine is the way I would go...
 
Veeam is very good, there's actually a free license if your a VCP so you can give it a whirl? Do a search.

I've used VMware Data Recovery with a good success ratio... it comes with VSphere Advanced/Enterprise & Essentials Plus? May be worth doing the math before shelling out on anything else. The benefit of this is it keeps it all under one hat, so to speak.
 
used to use a product before called vRanger or something like that.

It will backup the machines and save to FPT or DISK or anywhere you want

not cheap though
 
I've got a number of clients backing up ESXi over iSCSI and FC, with Backup Exec 2010 using the vStorage API. What problems are you getting?
 
NiCkNaMe said:
Veeam is very good, there's actually a free license if your a VCP so you can give it a whirl? Do a search.

I've used VMware Data Recovery with a good success ratio... it comes with VSphere Advanced/Enterprise & Essentials Plus? May be worth doing the math before shelling out on anything else. The benefit of this is it keeps it all under one hat, so to speak.
Click to expand...

+1

I use this at work in my lab - as above its very good, at home I use Quorumsoft for XenServer which is most excellent (just in case you can switch).

Consolidated backup is also good as the guys above have said, but I think (!) that this is only as part of an Enterprise license and upwards. :)
 
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