How to backup virtual machines on a standalone ESXi host?

Question

Standalone ESXi (4.1) host without any vCenter Server.

How to backup virtual machines as quickly and storage-friendly as possible?

I know I can access the ESXi console and use the standard Unix cp command, but this has the downfall of copying the whole VMDK files, not only their actually used space; so, for a 30-GB VMDK of which only 1 GB is used, the backup would take 30 full GBs of space, and time accordingly.

And yes, I know about thin-provisioned virtual disks, but they tend to behave very badly when physically copied, and/or to blow up to their full provisioned size; also, they are not recommended for actual VM performance.

It is ok for me to shut down the VMs before backing them up (i.e. I don't need "live" backups); but I need a way to copy them around efficiently; and yes, a way to automate shutdown/startup when taking a backup would also help.

I only have ESXi; no Service Console, no vCenter Server... what's the best way to handle this task? Also, what about restores?

Answer 1

My preferred solution for this is to simply export them to an ovf or ova file using either the vSphere client or the command line ovftool.

In the vSphere Client, make sure the VM is off, then highlight it and go to File->Export->Export OVF Template. Then just follow the prompts.

Restoring is a piece of cake, just do the reverse (the menu option is "Deploy OVF template", I think).

You may also wish to check out some of the options at http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/, I know these are very popular and I think there are some good choices for backups, although I haven't looked at any of them too recently.

Answer 2

I don't know if this fits the bill for you, but VM Explorer does a nice job of performing hot or cold backups of virtual machines. I believe that with ESXi 4.1 VM Explorer allows you to perform VM guest backups from one host to another host as well.

Answer 3

Ghetto VCB can do the backup while the machine is running. For the space you can use a deduplication+compression filesystem like lessfs on the backup server.

Answer 4

I ended up writing a script which copies the VM configuration files and uses vmkfstools -d to clone the VMDKs while preserving the thin provisioning.

For reference:

#!/bin/sh

if [ $# != 2 ]; then
        echo "Usage: $(basename $0) <SOURCE VM PATH> <DESTINATION PATH>"
        echo "Example: $(basename $0) /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/VM1 /vmfs/volumes/datastore2"
        exit
fi

vmx=$(basename $(/bin/ls $1/*.vmx))
name=$(grep displayName $1/$vmx | /bin/awk -F\" '{print $(NF-1)}')
vmxf=$(grep vmxf $1/$vmx | /bin/awk -F\" '{print $(NF-1)}')
nvram=$(grep nvram $1/$vmx | /bin/awk -F\" '{print $(NF-1)}')
vmdks=$(grep vmdk $1/$vmx | /bin/awk -F\" '{print $(NF-1)}')

echo "Started copying VM $name"

vmdir=$(basename $1)
destpath="$2/$vmdir"

echo "Source path: $1"
echo "Destination path: $destpath"

echo "Creating destination path $destpath"
/bin/mkdir -p $destpath

echo "Copying configuration files:"
echo $vmx
/bin/cp $1/$vmx $destpath
echo $vmxf
/bin/cp $1/$vmxf $destpath
echo $nvram
/bin/cp $1/$nvram $destpath

echo "Copying virtual disks:"
for vmdk in $vmdks;
do
        echo $vmdk
        /sbin/vmkfstools -d thin -i $1/$vmdk $destpath/$vmdk
done

echo "Completed copying VM $name"

This requires the VM to be powered off and have no active snapshots.