OK, so here you go
The Process to Back-up – Manual
- Open your vSphere client
- Turn off the VM you want to back-up
- Delete and consolidate any snapshots you may have
- Highlight the VM in the left pane
- Click File — Export OVF Template
- Give your export a name, location to export to and whether you want it in single file or multi-file mode. Folder of files (OVF) mode should be used if you want to later deploy the VM over a web server. Single file (OVA) mode should be used if it doesn’t need to be published via a web server. Use if you want to transfer over USB, back-up to some other storage, et cetera.
The Process to Restore
- Open the vSphere client
- Click File — Deploy OVF Template
- Locate the .ova file or input the URL where the .ovf is stored
- Click Next and input name of the new VM and other fields as necessary
The Process to Back-up – Automatic/scripted
I haven’t looked into automating the back-ups as of yet but I plan on using the vSphere Command-Line Interface to script the entire backup process.