How to Backup an ESXi installation on an USB Flash Drive or SD card, for security or redundancy.

AID: 5409

Status: Published

13096 points

Byhanccocka
TypeFAQs
Posted on2011-05-08 at 10:40:56

How to Backup ESXi installation on a USB flash drive or SD card.

Requirements

1. A valid ESXi installation on a USB flash drive or SD card.
2. A copy of Winimage for Windows.
3. A Windows computer.
4. Optional Blank DVD for making backup.
5. Optional USB flash drive or SD card for flash backup.

1: Download Winimage from the Internet

Using your internet browser, Internet Explorer or Mozilla, download a copy of Winimage from http://www.winimage.com/download.htm.

WinImage is a shareware product. You may copy, distribute, and try it for free, but if you use for longer than the evaluation period, you must register. You will receive a valid license, a registration code and the latest release.

2: Install Winimage

Install Winimage as per the vendors instructions on your Windows computer you need to backup the USB flash drive or SD card.

3: Insert the ESXi USB flash drive or in USB port on computer

Insert the ESXi USB flash drive or SD card inserted in a card reader into the computer you have installed Winimage on.

4: Start Winimage

winimage1.jpg

21 KB
Winimage Startup

Start Winimage from the Start Menu on your Windows computer.

5: From the disk menu

winimage2.jpg

35 KB
Create Virtual Hard Disk

From the disk menu, in Winimage, select Creating Virtual Hard Disk Image from Physical Drive.

6: Select the USB flash drive or SD card

See picture below

usbflashdriveimage.jpg

19 KB
Select a physical drive in the list

Select the USB flash drive or SD card, from the list, in this example, I'm using a Flash LUXIO USB flash drive.

7: Select Create Fixed Size Virtual Hard Disk

winimage3.jpg

18 KB
Select usb flash drive

Select the Fixed Size Virtual Hard Disk, ensure there is a dot in this selection. This ensures that the saved backup image is exactly the same size as the flash drive, you are copying example 2GB for a 2GB USB flash drive, 4GB fort a 4GB flash drive.

8: Click OK

Click OK

9: Specify a disk location and select Save

winimage4.jpg

25 KB
Select save location

Once you have specified a location, a progress bar will continue on screen showing the progress of the copy.

winimage5.jpg

5 KB
Progress Bar

10: Partiton to connect to

When prompted to connect to partition, click okay and Exit Winimage

11: The USB flash drive or SD contents will be saved as a complete image.

The contents will be saved to disk.

12: Complete.

The operation is complete and you can exist Winimage, and Safely remove your USB flash drives or SD cards, from the computer, by selecting the Safely remove hardware icon, in the system Smart tray.

13: Backup to DVD

If you image size is less than the size of a DVD (4.5GB), I also backup the USB/SD card installation image to a DVD, and if you have a spare USB flash drive, it doesn't hurt writing the contens to another USB flash drive or SD card. (and make sure you label with date, time, and version and build of ESX, and what server it is for!)

Thank you for reading my article, please leave valuable feedback.

Asked On: 2011-05-08 at 10:40:56ID5409
Tags: ESXi
,; USB
,; SD
,; backup
,; winnimage
Topic: VMware
Views: 2531

About The Author

hanccocka

Experts Exchange Expert of the Year 2011, and VMware vExpert 2012, 2011 has 15 years of experience working as a VMware and Virtualization Consultant in the Virtualization industry. Has been working with all VMware products since ’98.

More Articles From hanccocka

Comments

Expert Comment

by: sedberg1 on 2012-03-17 at 03:01:52ID: 46454

What about backing up a VMWare ESXi 5 free live server? I'm no talking about the VMs but the actual hypervisor and its configuration? I have a plan in place for backing up the VMs themselves to a NAS. But the ESXi server itself, not so much. If the server fails, I have a backup server in place in case my first server goes down. But my plan would be too install ESXi 5 on the second server, configure the IPs and other settings on the ESXi 5 server, copy the VMs over from the NAS, and then power them on. It's a long process though.

Is there an easier way to set this up? Unfortunately, we're not going to invest in VSphere Essentials. I know it's relatively cheap, but so's my company :-(

Author Comment

by: hanccocka on 2012-03-17 at 10:48:39ID: 46519

This procedure will also work for ESXi 5.0.

Expert Comment

by: johnnyt29 on 2012-04-22 at 11:05:30ID: 51221

Does it work / is it safe to "Create dynamically expanding virtual hard disk" (step 7) to be able to copy the image onto a smaller USB drive (and use less space in the process)?

Author Comment

by: hanccocka on 2012-04-22 at 11:30:18ID: 51222

I would recommend, using the full size image, and copy to like for like USB or SD cards, e.g. 2GB to 2GB, 4GB to 4GB.

dynamically expanding images, is a Winimage function, just use Winimage as an easy to use imaging tool.

if you need to shrink the image for storage, use WinZip, WinRAR or 7zip.

Expert Comment

by: johnnyt29 on 2012-04-22 at 11:33:25ID: 51223

My ESXi 5.0 USB thumb drive shows up as "USB Mass Storage Device" but doesn't get a letter assigned and is not seen by WinImage. I can see it in Windows Disk Management but can't right click and "Change Path and Drive Letter" for it. See attached screenshot.
Any suggestions?

thumbdrive.png
- 48 KB
windows 7 disk management screenshot

Author Comment

by: hanccocka on 2012-04-22 at 12:03:19ID: 51232

I would suggest asking a question, and the Experts can help you work through your issue.

Expert Comment

by: johnnyt29 on 2012-04-22 at 13:13:20ID: 51245

okay, how do I get file explorer and Winimage to see my USB thumb drive so that I can complete steps 6-13 indicated in this article

Expert Comment

by: johnnyt29 on 2012-04-25 at 16:15:51ID: 51616

Okay, let's try again.My ESXi 5.0 USB thumb drive shows up as "USB Mass Storage Device" but doesn't get a letter assigned and is not seen by WinImage. I can see it in Windows Disk Management but can't right click and "Change Drive Letter" for it. See attached screenshot for the second of the two ways I've tried it. (this time from the top windows, selecting volume "ESXi"

How do I get file explorer and Winimage to see my ESXi loaded USB thumb drive so that I can complete steps 6-13 indicated in this article?

Not-drive-letter.png
- 140 KB
windows 7 disk manager screenshot

Expert Comment

by: johnnyt29 on 2012-05-02 at 17:00:30ID: 52230

found a USB drive image tool that actually works. See http://www.alexpage.de/usb-image-tool/