VMWARE Esxi 3, Backup Exec 12.5

You can register and download the vCenter iso for trial, you can find the vcb in the iso

Can i just decompress the iso and pull the vcb files out of there? also will i need to upgrade 6 other things for this to work?

Yup ofcoz, you can use tool like magiciso to mount the iso on any Windows based machine

If VMWare won't allow you to download VCB, then it probably means that you are not entitled to do so since you may not have the correct licences. If this is the case, you will of course need to buy the appropriate vSphere licence. It could also mean that your ESX/ESXi server is not licenced correctly/appropriately.

wait a minute though... My understanding was that beucase esx is free (which it is right?) that i would also be able to back it up. Why would i not be able to download the runtime files to backup the vm's?


Robert

Free ESXi is there to allow you to 'wet' your feet with Virtualization. VMwares bet and hope is that you like it so much that you pay to get all the full features.
As of ESX 3.5 U3/U4 the ability to use tools to backup Free ESXi was 'prevented'. That is VMware specifically asked vendors such as Veeam/Vizioncore not to allow their products to backup free instances of ESXi. It sucks big time! 
What Free ESXi doesn't allow you to do therefore is backup the VM while it is running. You can power down the VM and then use a tool like FastSCP to copy the files to another location, etc.
However, there are alternatives .... William Lam has written some good tools to allow backups of running VMs on Free ESXi 
http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-8760

Thanks for the info... I found the trial copy that the other poster mentioned. I am going to install, however this is an exchange 2007 server and i dont want any issues. DO you know of any? And since this is a trial copy will it automatically expire on 2/26/10 ? Again i am only using the vcb runtime files.

Ok. I will try this and see if it works. Personally i would rather the client buy the software but the client doesnt want to use vm's however they also dont wanna pay to get off the vms either so there kinda stuck.

Hmm... No luck... All backup exec does is sit there and say exporting i let it run for 1 hr and 20 min and it no data was transferred.

Any Ideas?


Robert

Also when i test the credentials in backup exec it says "cannot find machine or not accessible" except that i can select the resources from the selections list.

When i test with your command i am able to do a export, although i did not let the whole thing run it definitely started to run (i used the base win2k3 image as my test).

Do i have to run the above commands as pre/post? before i can actually backpu the vm? the be doc didnt say i did....

Did it work if backup manually using the command i suggested?

Yes it does. But backup exec does not work.

Have you seen this http://viops.vmware.com/home/servlet/JiveServlet/download/1191-1-1277/Integrating%20Symantec%20Backup%20Exec%2012_5.pdf;jsessionid=7F451BA9D23A8586B86B93756501F84E

I was not able to get backup exec to work. it looks like i will need to get this client to upgrade to esx 3.5 (i hate IT) let me give you something that you cant backup so that i can charge you as much as possible so that you can back it up. this is why i dont use vmware.