VMware vSphere

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  • 1.  Tape Backup in ESXI

    Posted Jan 05, 2011 08:28 PM

    We have just purchased Dell TL2000 Auto Loader backup unit. We have 4 servers and all are running ESXI 4.1. One of the servers running ESXI is directly attached to the Auto Loader via SCSI ultra 320 Parallel port.  I would like to backup the all 4 datastores on the Auto Loader Tape backup unit.  There are several directions that I can take.One of the ways maybe possible is to install a VM running Ubuntu 10.10 on the server directly attached to the Tape unit.

    After I installed Ubuntu 10.10 on a VM I was able to add the SCSI hardware in the VM running ubuntu and the tape device is visible

    #:/dev/tape/by-id$ ls -la
    total 0
    drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 80 2011-01-05 14:57 .
    drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 80 2011-01-05 14:57 ..
    lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  9 2011-01-05 14:57 scsi-1IBM_ULT3580-TD3_1210422263 -> ../../st0
    lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2011-01-05 14:57 scsi-1IBM_ULT3580-TD3_1210422263-nst -> ../../nst0

    I wanted to export all the others datastores directories in other servers and mout them in the VM running Ubuntu (I am not sure if I can export datastore directories using NFS in ESXI). I could then backup the mounted directories to Tape. Please suggest any possible solutions to this or any other way that would be possible. Please suggest any tips.



  • 2.  RE: Tape Backup in ESXI

    Posted Jan 05, 2011 09:33 PM

    You can use the same export used to create an NFS datastore in your Ubuntu machine. Your problem will be that the VMDK files will be in use since the VMs are running. You would need to create a script to take a snapshot of the VM, freeing up the base VMDK file, back up the base VMDK and then commit the snapshot. It could be a little clumsy but not impossible. Install the VMware perl toolkit etc (download from the VMware Automation forum)

    You could take another approach and use a script to clone the VMs to an alternate location and then back those up. Have a look at the ghettoVCBg2 script.



  • 3.  RE: Tape Backup in ESXI

    Posted Jan 06, 2011 02:06 AM

    depending of the version of vsphere you have, you could use VMware Data Recovery that comes with it. if it's a paid version of the ESXi and you do not have VMware Data Recovery then i would advise tools like quest vranger or veeam backup.

    the free tools are doable but then might be a mess to keep track and monitor backup of 4 different hosts ( and more VMs on top).