Any ideas on how i can back up my vmdk files?

tdean

we're running ESX 3.5 with the old VCB utility. problem is, from what i understand we need a backup utility onsite to copy the snapshots. unfortunately we backup off site, so there is nothing. is there a way to manually copy them over? i just bough a 5.5Tb Iomega storage device for this very purpose. i will be upgrading to ESXi 4.1 next month.

blargoe

Once you get to 4.1, you can use the vSphere Data Recovery backup appliance if you want something cheap/free. Never used it, but noticed the other day that it's included even in the Standard edition entitlement.

Not sure what to tell you for the current situation.. never really used VCB. What is the backup software being used to back up to the offsite backup location? Most major backup vendors integrate with VCB.

tdean

blargoe wrote: »

Once you get to 4.1, you can use the vSphere Data Recovery backup appliance if you want something cheap/free. Never used it, but noticed the other day that it's included even in the Standard edition entitlement.

Not sure what to tell you for the current situation.. never really used VCB. What is the backup software being used to back up to the offsite backup location? Most major backup vendors integrate with VCB.

yeah, i would like to get them backed up before the upgrade.... the backup company is called Intronis. The client is called something like Remote Rescue i think.

i was just wondering if i could copy them right from the datastore if they were powered down.

blargoe

tdean wrote: »

yeah, i would like to get them backed up before the upgrade.... the backup company is called Intronis. The client is called something like Remote Rescue i think.

i was just wondering if i could copy them right from the datastore if they were powered down.

You absolutely could do so. Just install the backup agent for your backup software into your ESX Service Console (assuming, that they have a Linux backup agent). As long as the VM's are powered off, it would back up all the vmdk's just like any other files.

jibbajabba

Grab an eval of Veeam

tdean

blargoe wrote: »

You absolutely could do so. Just install the backup agent for your backup software into your ESX Service Console (assuming, that they have a Linux backup agent). As long as the VM's are powered off, it would back up all the vmdk's just like any other files.

i was thinking abouth doing them manually at night. just pwr 2-3 of them down and copy. all i need is the vmdk, right?

tdean

Gomjaba wrote: »

Grab an eval of Veeam

whats that?

jibbajabba

tdean wrote: »

whats that?

Veeam: #1 for VMware vSphere, ESX & ESXi Backup and Virtualization Management

tdean

Gomjaba wrote: »

Veeam: #1 for VMware vSphere, ESX & ESXi Backup and Virtualization Management

jibbajabba

tdean wrote: »

Using that for 100s of VMs in production and works like a charm

tdean

Gomjaba wrote: »

Using that for 100s of VMs in production and works like a charm

is it expensive or tough to use? all we have is 20 vms.

jibbajabba

tdean wrote: »

is it expensive or tough to use? all we have is 20 vms.

Unfortuantely I cannot give specific "enduser" prices as we are hosting partner and as a result have completely different pricings. "Normal" pricing is per host / CPU whereas we pay per VM.

It is not that I don't want to give you pricings, I just don't know them

tdean

Gomjaba wrote: »

Unfortuantely I cannot give specific "enduser" prices as we are hosting partner and as a result have completely different pricings. "Normal" pricing is per host / CPU whereas we pay per VM.

It is not that I don't want to give you pricings, I just don't know them

oh, no prob... at least its another option i didnt know about.

jibbajabba

tdean wrote: »

oh, no prob... at least its another option i didnt know about.

Random google reckons around $500 / socket (that is per CPU, not system)

Another one is

VMware ESX Replication Solution for Virtualized Infrastructures | Quest Software

But I think that is $1k per host (that is per system, not CPU)

jibbajabba

tdean wrote: »

i was thinking abouth doing them manually at night. just pwr 2-3 of them down and copy. all i need is the vmdk, right?

You can indeed just backup the VMDK .. having said that - I always backup the whole lot

Once the VMs are powred down you could just ftp / scp them to another server ...

tdean

Gomjaba wrote: »

You can indeed just backup the VMDK .. having said that - I always backup the whole lot

Once the VMs are powred down you could just ftp / scp them to another server ...

ugh, my VMWare class cant come soon enough... how would i ftp from my EMC AX4 to my Iomega nas? i wonder if theres a utility included in Navisphere that would help.

MentholMoose

You wouldn't. You ftp/scp from the VMware ESX host console. Unless you're using NFS, the SAN doesn't "understand" the filesystem (VMFS) where the VMDKs are stored.

blargoe

Couldn't he just mount an NFS store from his NAS onto his ESX Server and copy them directly through the vcenter client?

jibbajabba

blargoe wrote: »

Couldn't he just mount an NFS store from his NAS onto his ESX Server and copy them directly through the vcenter client?

Doesn't work like that - you can't copy from one datastore to another using the vi client. You can download them to your local PC using the vi client and then up again to the other datastore.

You can storage vmotion them between datastores, but not copying (svmotion is migrating not copying).

Or you can clone them as well, that might work, but its a dirty solution if all you want is a backup

tdean wrote: »

ugh, my VMWare class cant come soon enough... how would i ftp from my EMC AX4 to my Iomega nas? i wonder if theres a utility included in Navisphere that would help.

If it is ESXi then all you got is SCP anyway.

1. You need to enable SSH on the ESXi server

ESXi (ESX 3i) Enable SSH

2. Then download an SSH client, such as Putty (first google hit) and login to the server

3. Then browse to the VMs you want to upload.

The datastores are mounted under

/vmfs/volumes/<datastorename>

For example

[root@vsphere-1 volumes]# ls -ls |grep ISOs
   0 lrwxr-xr-x 1 root root   35 Mar 16 11:36 ISOs -> 4c692d0f-07c76dc0-8012-003048f5af08

Then go into that particular datastore

For example

[root@vsphere-1 /]# cd /vmfs/volumes/Dev-Storage-Vol-01/Mike-RRAS
[root@vsphere-1 Mike-RRAS]# ls
Mike-RRAS-1161969b.hlog  Mike-RRAS-ctk.vmdk   Mike-RRAS.nvram  Mike-RRAS.vmsd  Mike-RRAS.vmxf  vmware-2.log  vmware-4.log  vmware-6.log
Mike-RRAS-aux.xml        Mike-RRAS-flat.vmdk  Mike-RRAS.vmdk   Mike-RRAS.vmx   vmware-1.log    vmware-3.log  vmware-5.log  vmware.log

Then you can SCP those files to another server. This server unfortunately needs to run Linux as SCP is based on SSH

[root@vsphere-1 Mike-RRAS]# scp * root@<server IP>:/home/
The authenticity of host 'localhost (<server IP>)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is 79[IMG]https://us.v-cdn.net/6030959/uploads/images/smilies/icon_mad.gif[/IMG]x:43:70:7b[IMG]https://us.v-cdn.net/6030959/uploads/images/smilies/icon_mad.gif[/IMG]x:9e:72:fb:42:13:fe:9f:a3:1c:0c.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added '<server IP>' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.
root@<server IP>'s password: 
1-Mike-RRAS.vmdk         1%   20MB  20.3MB/s   01:00 ETAK

blargoe

Gomjaba wrote: »

Doesn't work like that - you can't copy from one datastore to another using the vi client. You can download them to your local PC using the vi client and then up again to the other datastore.

You can storage vmotion them between datastores, but not copying (svmotion is migrating not copying).

Or you can clone them as well, that might work, but its a dirty solution if all you want is a backup

Yep... I was thinking of the option to "Move files to another location accessible to vCenter"... but 1) that's a move, not a copy and 2) requires vCenter Server, which (I think) tdean does not have.

For a nice, FREE gui solution to VM File management vis SCP, this looks promising: VMware ESX / ESXi file Management - Veeam FastSCP 3.0

tdean

yeah guys, thanks for the responses. yes, we do have vCenter. its 2.5 or somehting though, and the hosts are ESX 3.5. i can access my Iomega device from the datastore browser but i get errors when i try to "download". im assuming thats b/c they are powered on. i am doing an AV deployment this weekend. i may just copy everything over once they are powered down. We are upgrading to ESXi in a couple months.

jibbajabba

tdean wrote: »

yeah guys, thanks for the responses. yes, we do have vCenter. its 2.5 or somehting though, and the hosts are ESX 3.5. i can access my Iomega device from the datastore browser but i get errors when i try to "download". im assuming thats b/c they are powered on. i am doing an AV deployment this weekend. i may just copy everything over once they are powered down. We are upgrading to ESXi in a couple months.

If the VMs are "on" then yes, you will get an error. If you get an NFC error then you need to make sure the DNS is in place when accessing the datastore browser (ESX Host <> vCenter <> Client used to download / upload)