How do I backup an ESXi server?

[dorlow615]

I work in IT, but not with VMWare.  To play around, I just bought a Dell rack mount server for my house and a VMWare ESXi 6.5 license.  It's working well so far.  But, the OS on the VMs have a paid license.  Paid $200 for two different VMs.  I kind of got unlucky.  My personal desktop that I was runing Oracle Virtualbox on it where those two VMs were at with the $200 license died.  I wasn't able to get the files off the hard drive.  Also, restoring from backups wasn't working....

Figured I'd just build it all now from scratch.  But the licensing is turning out to be a pain to recover since I bought the licenses through the Microsoft Store and I don't have a windows key.  I spent hours on the phone with Microsoft support trying to activate them and everything they tried didn't work.

Now, about an hour ago, I tried what they did again and one of the VMs are now licensed.  The other is still failing with the same error.  

Once I get these VMs licensed on my ESXi host, I want to make sure they're backed up so, if this happens again, I won't have to go through this mess again.

My server is setup with 4 drives in a RAID 5 config.  I know about VMWare snapshots.  But, if the RAID completely fails, then I need a way to recover from a backup outside of the host server.  

Also, is there an all-in-one software package that is recommended to backup the ESXi host VMs as well as the content inside the VMs.  Now I know the backup of the whole ESXi server will have all the contents inside it.  But, what if I just wanted to restore one file within a VM.  Would an ESXi backup allow me to restore a whole VM or only restore a single file inside that VM?  I'm assuming I'd need an agent of some sort in the VM where the backup server would back it up outside the VM.

[IRIX201110141]

These are two different things.

1. Backup of the ESXi configuration
2. Backup of the VMs

In most cases the first one isnt performed from any one. There is a cmd one liner to backup the config of ESXi but restore does only work with the exact same HW and ESXi version. There is also Host Profiles which is part of the Enterprise+ edition which archived something else but is more flexible.  But.... reinstalling an standalone ESXi can be done in minutes.... the vNetwork can be take a little be longer depending on how much port groups.

For the second one dozens of 3rd. party programs like Veeam, Nakivo, and all the others exists. They all backup the VM as an image but for sure they are able to restore the complete image and single files from inside the VM (GuestOS) also. Veeam also restore parts of the VM (config, single vmdks and so on)

The Veeam community edition is free (for up to 10 VMs) and i expect that others offers something similar.  BUT all of these programs needs a non free ESXi, which means your ESXi needs a payed license(vSphere Essentials or up) to get the APIs unlocked. Solutions that works around also exists but are  pita.

Neither your raid5 or a VM snapshot is a backup.

Regards,
Joerg

 

[dorlow615]

I totally get that the raid or the snapshot are not backups.  I've always been very untrusting when it comes to backups and have multiple options.  I've preached that you should have a backup and you should also have a different backup so, if the first backup fails, you have a second backup to fall back on that's backed up a completely different way to different servers and drives at different physical locations. (when i worked at the school in IT, at that time in 2008, the school had a 6 Mb/s internet circuit (that was microwave because no one ran hard lines out there.)  I had 1,000 kids/teachers sharing 6 Mb/s. Crazy to think.  One kid watching youtube in one lab would bring the whole intenret to a crawl for everyone else.  We backed up to tape and USB drives. I'd backup to local USB drives and then drive the hard drive and or tape to a different building in case the server room caught fire.  Did that every week or so.   At that school I ran their backups.  Every few months, I'd send out an email to all employees saying "this is a test of a server failure... pretend everything crashed and you need a really important file back.  Let me know of some examples of really important files to you so I can be sure I can restore it."  Then I wasn't just restoring the same thing or stuff I could find.  There were times they'd ask for a file that wasn't even part of a backup and I'd have to then adjust it and add it to a backup.  I have basically 101 training in backups from college.  I just winged it as I went.

But, now I store all of my important stuff I can't loose mostly in Google Drive, so I'm not too worried about loosing that stuff.  I'm trying to do backups more so, if I loose the system and have to start over, I don't need to spend days trying to figure out licenses or spend money on licenses I've already purchased..... that if I had an exact backup I could just restore it with the license integrated.  Also, maybe something happens.  I change a config on a VM and later I notice the VM is messing up doing what I want it to do and need to back it out.  It would be nice to be able to restore an individual config file or something.  Nothing too serious.  This is just home stuff.  Nothing business critical.  

And I say licensing because my home computer crashed and I lost two vms that I paid $200 each for a license and it was a digital license.  Took over a week working with Microsoft to get it transfered to a new vm on vmware.

[dorlow615]

Those two vms, they were part of a backup.  But, every backup restore point I tried to restore, the restore was corrupt for every date I had... so, I did back it up.  I never tested it though... naughty me.