Backup ESX 3.5 host

And, it's a *free* option :)

~coolsport00

1 more item to note....the steps outlined in the KB are solely for 3.x versions of ESX. vSphere doesn't have those files for ESX configs any longer....they are now in a VMDK file, and the only way to b/u restore ESX configs in vSphere is if you have Ent Plus edition and utilize host profiles (kinda crappy if you ask me). For ESXi vSphere, you can use vCLI to b/u & restore ESXi configs.

Hope that helps.

~coolsport00

I know very little in ESX commands from the console, I usually do my work in the VIC can you give me the commands needed to back those files and directories? I will be moving to vsphere sometime in the future but for now I will be staying in 3.5

Hi

Sincerely i don't use backup the host. Don't see any point on this. We can restore a VMware host in 15/20m.

Or we have a Disk problem(and this cannot be resolve by a restore into the same host), or the recover(new install) of a VMware host is quickly.

That is my view.

Jail

in this instance the Data is local to the ESX that is why i need to backup the host

It also depends if you are willing to do cold backups vs hot backups.  

I like

http://www.veeam.com/vmware-esxi-fastscp.html

It's free and if you make copies of the vmx and vmdk files, restores are as easy and copying the files back to your datastore.

Well, all ESX/i config data is local by default, but what "bestway" is mentioning is that he doesn't have much in the way of configurations if a ESX/i rebuild is necessary. For me, I also don't back up the configs, but that isn't really what this question is about...rather how to do it. But, if you have several vSwitches, and all other kinds of configs going on, it's probably better that a b/u & restore for ESX/i configs is implemented.

~coolsport00

He's already using VCB for VM backups, as mentioned in the orig post "bestway"....

~coolsport00

Hi

@coolsport00 yes when we have many configuration(vSwitch and other configurations) is not so easy to create a new one.

But that is why I have scripts to manually create all the vSwitchs, portgrpous, VLANs etc. With this, just re-install using a ks file then run a post install script.

In this case the asker have a local storage with the VMs(so re-install is more difficult), but this just for additional information in regarding re-install and use post scripts

Jail

Thanks so much this is what i was looking for. just one other thing... the VMware document you references mentioned to copy files from the /etc/vmware directory, excluding:
o      Any soft links

what would the mean by soft links?

Thanks again!