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Backing up VMWARE Virtual Machines on a physical HDD

Hi experts,

I have a IBM Bladecenter S with two 6-disk modules, the first has 6 HDDs that contains the datastore for the virtual machines. The second has a 1Tb hot swap hard disk I installed today. I was planning to use it to another thing but I believe that I should use it as the backup of the virtual machines (as I don't really have a backup of them).

The vm system is VMWare Vsphere 4.1 Basic, I don't have a backup solution from VMWare (I can't find one that came with my license). But I can copy the vm files to the hard disk. I don't want to touch the disk or format it until I know how to do it right. Can you please help me preparing the disk?

If I can't back up the ESX o.s. that's ok, I just want to back up at least 2 critical virtual servers.
Avatar of Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
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Checkout my EE Article

VMware ESX/ESXi Backup Guide

VMware Converter, GhettoVCB, Veeam FastSCP will give you backups.
When you insert this 1Tb hot swap disk, can you, add it as storage?
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ASKER

hanccocka, do you mean as a datastore? I'm still learning how to do that, I just inserted the disk and that's it :)
Yes, it must be formatted as a VMFS datastore, to be used.

Using the vSphere Client, click the Host Server, Select Configuration Tab, Click Storage, Add Storage, and see if it appears, so you can use it.

Also to let you know, ESX is not really designed to use hot swap storage!
use winscp to connect directly to datastore and select what you want to backup directly , later you can use this tools to restore the machines to the datastore and add them to inventory .. just simply ..btw ,the speed of this tool about 4mb/s of upload and dowload ..
here is it :

http://winscp.net/eng/download.php
I turned off the VMs and I couldn't recognize the disk, It turned off everything and the Bladecenter S power. I still can't see the Disk/LUN while trying to add as storage...
Its possible the storage controller is not supported.

Does the storage controller is attached to appear in the host server, check storage adapters?

is this disk SATA?
It is an IBM 1Tb 7.2K 6Gbps NL SAS HDD
http://www-01.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?infotype=AN&subtype=CA&htmlfid=897/ENUS110-052&appname=USN
It is connected on a second 6-Disk Module, the first one is full with 6 HDD of 300Gb, HOT-SWAP SAS.

http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/xbc/cog/bc_s_8886/bc_s_8886hdd.html
the first six disks are configured in a RAID set?

and this storage controller is visible in ESX?

this array is presented as a logical disk, and is seen in the ESX server.

is this disk visible to the ESX server?
Have you presented the disk or array to the blade, using bladecenter management.
I think I cannot find it, it put fdisk -l | grep Disk and I found three disks, one that seems to be the array (1.4 Tb), the second that has around 71 Gb (the disk on the blade where ESXI is) and the third that is smaller, like a partition of that disk.

So...
Its been a while since Ive configured the Bladecenter S, but I believe you would present the array to the blade, and it could be zoned. So have you checked the disk is currently presented to this blade.
I never accessed IBM Director... I don't even know the default IP or whatever IP it has! oh I must ask for it...
Ok... seems it is an issue that IBM support has to check. Somehow I can't access the module. IBM support is checking it.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
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Hi, sorry for the delay but I got a new job and had to leave this for a long time unnatended. So, I'm calling IBM and we'll all be fine. Thanks!