Set up a CIFS share on ESXi 5 host?

[cbarber]

Hi,

I'm new to ESXi and I'm trying to spin up on all the normal implementation strategies... is it possible to create a cifs share on the host so that another computer (e.g. Windows Server physical machine) can see the physical storage of the host, for example to copy all the VMs off it for backup?

I've seen tons of posts about how to create a share on a windws server that the host or its VMs can reach, but I don't see how that solves the issue of backing up the physical storage of the host.

So I will ask the question in a more generalized way: what is the normal strategy to backup the hosts? Yes, there are expensive enterprise-class products out there to do it, but what about small operations with only the hypervisor, or the $560 VS Essentials? There must be a price-proportionate solution to this somewhere...

Thanks for your advice!

Chris

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the Community - No it is not possible to set up a CIFS share since ESXi is not a Windows machine - if you are looking to copy the files that make up the VM you could do it via SCP but that would require enabling SSH on your ESXi host - Key quesion are you looking at how to back up you VMs? If you are you can also look at products like VMware's VDR or Veeam Backup-

[abbie11]

Hi I think to take backup install VDR and configure it for autobackup . which is good option in VM ware .

Other wise there is lot of third party tool availabel for same .

Yours, Abbie

[cbarber]

Ok, that makes sense... it really is a backup strategy question. I went down the cifs route based on some comments from a colleauge who probably misunderstood my question to him (or I misunderstood his answer!).

I'll take a look at VDR and Veeam but I suspect these will not be priced in reasonable proportion to the cost of VS Essentials.

I don't see any reason not to enable ssh on the hosts, but that's just a shell, not a view of the file system. I'm guessing the approach with that would be to script out file copy operations against the host through ssh, copying the the stuff back to the other server where it can be made available to whatever form of backup you've got (tape, more disks, etc).

I'm marking this question as answered because I originally put it in terms of cifs on the host, and it is clear now what the answer to that is. I would like to continue this discussion around the strategy for backing up the filesystem of the host, by which I mean backing up the VMs.

Thank you all for your advice!

Chris