ESXi - Backups

5 de julho de 2009 in Etiquetas: Virtualizacao

There are also the ESX, which is the commercial version of the OS, and obviously has but features.

The requirements for the tutorial that follows are: ESX and installed PuTTY (or other tool remote connection over SSH);

Tutorial:
1 - Enable SSH access:
In the console of ESXi press ALT + F1 and type the word "unsupported".
Then enter the root password. After that it gets access to bash OS ESXi.

2 - Edit /etc /inetd.conf and uncomment the line #ssh (remove the #);

3 - Restart the ESXi server;

4 - Connect to the server by ssh:
ssh root@IP_ServidorESXi (for your OS is Linux)
If users of Windows : ( can use PuTTY to connect to ESX.

5 - With the command wget-download the script to the VMware ESXi.
ESXi3x Version:
wget http://communities.vmware.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/8760-34-23594/ghettoVCB.sh
ESXi4x Version:
wget http://communities.vmware.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/8760-34-23594/ghettoVCB.sh

6 - Edit the script and change some important parameters:

* VM_BACKUP_VOLUME = / vmfs / volumes / backup -> path (local or NFS) which will be the copies of the VM (Virtual Machines). It is recommended to keep a host / remote storage (for NFS).
* ENABLE_2GB_SPARSE = 0 -> = 1 if the copy is divided into files of 2GB.
* VM_BACKUP_ROTATION_COUNT = 3 -> Number of copies to save up to start over.
* VM_BACKUP_DIR_NAMING_CONVENTION -> Format of the name of the copy. It is recommended to leave as is.
* POWER_VM_DOWN_BEFORE_BACKUP = 0 -> = 0 if the copies are made with MV in production.
* ENABLE_HARD_POWER_OFF = 0 -> If = 0 is off. Lets force the closure of the MV if it has not closed during the specified time in ITER_TO_WAIT_SHUTDOWN.
* ITER_TO_WAIT_SHUTDOWN = 4 -> is not applied if the previous option is = 0; recommended to leave as is.

7 - Create vmbackups file with the name of the virtual machines that ESXi contains. Example:

ServerA
ServidorB
ServidorC

8 - Run the script:. / GhettoVCB.sh vmbackups
During the execution of the script will be shown a progress bar.

Recommendations:
- You can create a small script to call the eating presented in section 8 and put it in cron (. Weekly;. Daily; (..)) in order to automate the execution of backups.
- The copies directly to NFS can be slow, you can make them to a local directory and then copy them to a remote NFS shares, thus saving time in the backup copies of each MV.

References:
http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-8760
http://www.vmware.in.th/forum/index.php?topic=6.0
http://blog.theworldrunsontechnology.com/2009/04/creating-virtual-machine-backups-in.html

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