Backing up ESXi?

slylittlefox · 1 May 2009 at 12:49

Afternoon all,

Just wondering what methods you use to backup ESXi?

With VMware Server 2, we simply suspend the machine, back it up to a separate server using Rsync, and then stream from there to tape.

We've been trying to figure out what's the closest we can get to achieving a similar sort of process with ESXi?

Just thinking it over we've been thinking of suspending the machines remotely from a Linux server using the remote CLI command set, then wget'ing it whilst it's still suspended.

However, how do we then upload to the metal if we need to restore? And also, wget's hardly the most efficient transport method

Thanks

Curiosityx · 1 May 2009 at 19:05

There are many options and most are disk to disk solutions, Veeam is one, Backup Exec now have an agent for ESXi as of version 12.5 and i was informed of some others recently, vSphere (VI4) i believe it was called.

iaind · 1 May 2009 at 19:19

vSphere comes with Data Recovery in some versions but you need to be running a paid for product and I dont know why you wouldnt just use ESX if that was the case

Veeam is probably the cheapest as backup exec is normally stupidly expensive

brainchylde · 2 May 2009 at 11:30

Veeam here. Pretty good, for free.

iaind · 2 May 2009 at 11:40

Free? FastSCP is free but backup isnt...unless I'm missing something?

brainchylde · 2 May 2009 at 11:58

iaind said:
Free? FastSCP is free but backup isnt...unless I'm missing something?

Sorry - yes. We use FastSCP. I didn't realise it didn't backup. We only used it once to copy vm's from one ESXi Server to another. We are decomissioning a couple of the servers before we bring in our SAN and proper ESX.

iaind · 2 May 2009 at 15:36

I think the only differences are the ability to schedule it and it can do snapshots so you can back up running VMs..

Its not expensive though