Backup solution for (free) ESXi

[marius1]

Is there any backup solution (freeware, if possible) for VMware ESXi free version?

Regards

marius

[a_p_]

Due to the API limitations there are only a few options available, some of them are ghettoVCB and Trilead VM Explorer. Take a look at these two to see whether they meet your requirements.

André

[vmroyale]

Note: Discussion successfully moved from VMware ESXi 5 to Backup & Recovery

[virtetc]

Check out Thinware vBackup (www.vbackup.com). It works with VMware ESXi free.

[Josh26]

virtetc wrote:

Check out Thinware vBackup (www.vbackup.com). It works with VMware ESXi free.

The website you linked indicates that it uses VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection. Since this is a licensed VMware feature, I don't understand how it can operate on ESXi free?

[jeremyb]

Thinware vBackup uses an SSH-based interface to backup virtual machines on ESXi Free. Storage APIs for Data Protection is only used used with licensed VMware products (vSphere Essentials and above).

[BoneTrader]

There is also a soloution from Veeam -> Veeam Backup Free Edition for VMware and Hyper-V VMs (VeeamZIP)

[Josh26]

Way to bump a seven month old thread to advertise your own product BackupGal.

Now that time you've made six such posts in the first few hours of signing up - well I tend to consider spam a significant negative sign on a product.

[ch1ta]

Just want to point out that VeeamZIP doesn’t support free ESX(i) version, since the latter has certain APIs blocked that prevents Veeam from backing VMs that reside on such a host. Cheers.

[BackupGal]

ch1ta wrote:

Just want to point out that VeeamZIP doesn’t support free ESX(i) version, since the latter has certain APIs blocked that prevents Veeam from backing VMs that reside on such a host. Cheers.

Yep, Unitrends was pretty stoked to announce this capability at VMworld this year!  How'd we do it??

We didn’t break any laws of physics – nor any other laws of man or nature – we simply extended our licensing such that a limited set of VMs would be supported at the GOS (Guest Operating System) level.  Because Unitrends supports data protection at both the HOS (Host Operating System) level as well as the GOS level, it was straightforward to make this happen.  It’s actually no different than many of our customers who use our products to protect 100% virtual environments with granular combinations of HOS- and GOS-level protection or those that have mixed physical and virtual environments who of course use HOS- and GOS-level protection (obvious because in the physical world there is only GOS-level protection.)

You can grab the Free Edition for free ESX(I) here: http://go.unitrends.com/unitrends-and-free-esxi

[MarVista]

Most of backup software will ask for licensed ESX host when you will add ESX host on backup server so its not possible to add free version ..

Try thin backup software for Free ESXi host.

Thinware vBackup

Yours,
Mar Vista

[autumnwalker]

how do you configure unitrends to backup the free ESXi license? I just installed it and got errors on all my hosts saying they are not licensed for the operation.

[BackupGal]

autumnwalker wrote:

how do you configure unitrends to backup the free ESXi license? I just installed it and got errors on all my hosts saying they are not licensed for the operation.

Sorry you are running into difficulties!  You will need to deploy the UEB fee edition to your free ESXi environment and run backups with the Unitrends agent. Host-level snapshot backups are not supported with free ESXi, so using the Unitrends agent is required.

Here is a link to the deployment guide: http://www.unitrends.com/docs/user-guides/unitrendsenterprisebackup-vmware.pdf

If you need additional assistance, please don't hesitate to email me ([e-mail]) your contact information and I will connect you with our support team.

-Jenn

[autumnwalker]

BackupGal wrote:

Sorry you are running into difficulties!  You will need to deploy the UEB fee edition to your free ESXi environment and run backups with the Unitrends agent. Host-level snapshot backups are not supported with free ESXi, so using the Unitrends agent is required.

Here is a link to the deployment guide: http://www.unitrends.com/docs/user-guides/unitrendsenterprisebackup-vmware.pdf

If you need additional assistance, please don't hesitate to email me ([e-mail]) your contact information and I will connect you with our support team.

-Jenn

So essentially Unitrends is only capable of doing file-level backups on ESXi free?

[Josh26]

So essentially Unitrends is only capable of doing file-level backups on ESXi free?

To be fair, that would be all that any product is capable of. VMware themselves lock  out the VMware level backup API from the free edition.

[admin]

VDP is a robust, simple-to-deploy, disk-based backup and recovery solution. VDP is fully integrated with VMware vCenter Server and the VMware vSphere Web Client. VDP enables centralized and efficient management of backup jobs while storing backups in deduplicated destination storage.

VDP supports these specifications:

• Each vCenter Server can support up to 10 VDP appliances.
• Each VDP appliance supports backup for up to 100 virtual machines.
• Only 1 VDP appliance can exist per ESXi/ESX host.
• Support for 0.5 TB, 1 TB, or 2 TB of deduplicated backup data.

[DanielJGF]

If you want a backup program for ESXi 5.1/5.5 that is simple, agentless, can do hot backups, sends a complete report after each backup and can even provision hard disk space by deleting the eldest backup folders you can try XSIBackup at http://33hops.com/free-open-source-software.html, it is Open Source software and runs directly in the hypervisor. It has its own crontab so you can program as many backups as you want and you can use it without any limits, but the most important feature is its super easy to install and configure.

[King_Robert]

there is Thin backup available through which you can take backup of the VMs on Free ESX.

[BackupGal]

autumnwalker wrote:

BackupGal wrote:

Sorry you are running into difficulties!  You will need to deploy the UEB fee edition to your free ESXi environment and run backups with the Unitrends agent. Host-level snapshot backups are not supported with free ESXi, so using the Unitrends agent is required.

Here is a link to the deployment guide: http://www.unitrends.com/docs/user-guides/unitrendsenterprisebackup-vmware.pdf

If you need additional assistance, please don't hesitate to email me ([e-mail]) your contact information and I will connect you with our support team.

-Jenn

So essentially Unitrends is only capable of doing file-level backups on ESXi free?

you can restore the whole VM. You can even take bare metals of the VM and do V2P or V2V... you get ALL the functionality we provide to backup servers, and can get 4VMs free.

[mindAmp]

I found this thread this evening, thought I'd respond quickly.  First, the Unitrends Free for VMware (including free/unlicensed ESXi) is here: http://www.unitrends.com/products/enterprise-backup-software/unitrends-free  This version protects 1TB - unlimited VMs, retention, etc.  It also supports Hyper-V and physical Windows servers and clients.  You backup locally and can send backup copies to AWS, Google, and other third-party cloud providers.  You can also do instant recovery.

Second, to the question "autumnwalker" asks - as everyone knows, VMware does not allow the use of VADP to do host-level snapshots for free/unlicensed ESXi.  So we support host-level protection if you had "paid" (or licensed) VMware vSphere - and we support agent-based protection if you're using free.  Since we offer instant recovery for VMware and Windows, you can do instant recovery in both the paid/licensed version of VMware vSphere and in the free/unlicensed version of VMware vSphere.