Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

backup

Veeam Backup 3.0 supports ESXi, including free version!

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Veeam just released Backup 3.0 with ESXi(including the Free version) support:

In addition to the ESXi backup through VCB that was introduced with version 2.0, Veeam Backup 3.0 now supports ESXi backup without VCB. Veeam Backup is the only VMware backup solution that lets you backup and restore virtual machines running on all existing editions of ESXi, including ESXi free.

Now head over to Veeam and download your trial and start doing full VM backups. Veaam Backup also provides you with a file level restore:

Veeam’s fast file-level recovery feature allows you to restore individual files from your image-level backups and replicas in seconds, without having to extract the full VM image to your local drive.

Just a tip, I would suggest to do a “zero-out” before running the full VM backup!

Backup your ESXi vm’s

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On the VMTN forum there’s a great topic on backing up your ESXi VM’s with a free solution. After a couple of pages of discussion and several solutions VMTN user lamw created a community document called “ghettoVCBni.sh – Free alternative for backing up VM’s for ESX 3.5+ and ESXi”.

This document contains a script and a list file. The list file should contain all the VM’s that need to be backed up. You can hook your ESXi box up to an NFS share and backup your VM’s to the NFS share. (NFS share could be a Windows Server for instance) You can set several variables to adjust the script to your needs:

  • Backup location
  • Sparse files(2GB chunks)
  • Backup Rotation
  • Directory naming scheme
  • NFS mount options

I haven’t personally tested the script but looking at the feedback it should work great. I think this is definitely worth checking out. So if you need a backup solution for your ESXi host and don’t want to spend money on 3rd party tools, check this one.