ESXi free - duplicating or backup VMs

[KuJaX]

I am playing around with the ESXi 5.1 free version (well it is on trial period but I think after trial expires it is still free, just loses some features). I was curious what you all use for backing up the VM's so that you can deploy them to a different ESXi server? I assume that this is one of the features of some of the license paid versions of VMware but I assume that there is some free or inexpensive VM replicating or backing up software for any type of instance (windows/linux/etc)?

What do you use, cost, and why?

 

[Nothinman]

It depends on what you're trying to accomplish. If they're in a cluster you would just vMotion the VM (and maybe storage vMotion the VMDK if you want it on another datastore) to move it between hosts. If the VM is shutdown you can just copy the directory containing the vmx, vmdk, etc if you're moving it to a new host to make it a lab or something. For backups you most likely want a 3rd party tool which uses the VMware APIs to quiece the filesystems and snapshot the VM and then dump that snapshot to another drive, tape, etc.

The why question is what you need to answer first and then you can figure out how, what and how much.

 

[KuJaX]

It depends on what you're trying to accomplish. If they're in a cluster you would just vMotion the VM (and maybe storage vMotion the VMDK if you want it on another datastore) to move it between hosts. If the VM is shutdown you can just copy the directory containing the vmx, vmdk, etc if you're moving it to a new host to make it a lab or something. For backups you most likely want a 3rd party tool which uses the VMware APIs to quiece the filesystems and snapshot the VM and then dump that snapshot to another drive, tape, etc.

The why question is what you need to answer first and then you can figure out how, what and how much.

The WHY: I'm building a lab of various linux and windows VM's using 7200rpm drives. If we take any of the VM's to a production environment then it will be on a SAS drive. All other hardware is the same, just a different type of hard drive in a different RAID array.

So I guess i'm looking more for a drag and drop the VM. The VM themselves will be shutdown, so if copying vmx, vmdk, etc is the easiest route then that is fine. Doing it while the VM is running is not a requirement.... atleast at this point.

i just want to make sure that my work in the lab environment with the 7200rpm hard drive is not in vein if we use some of the VM's built in lab to go into production using SAS hard drive.

 

[Nothinman]

The drives don't matter to the VMs at all because they're abstracted away, all of the hardware presented to them is virtual so you can copy them around all you want and they'll boot just fine. But determining which is the easiest depends on the setup. If you have all of your ESXi hosts in a cluster with vCenter and licensing for DRS, vMotion, etc with shared storage you can move all of them around with the vSphere client. If the lab and production are physically separate then you'll have to jump through some hoops like copying the VMs vi scp manually.

Other details like the vSwitch configuration may be an issue, but that's simple to fix on the destination end before you power the VM on. But the VMs have absolutely no idea about the real storage below them because that's abstracted away first to the VMDK then the VMware datastore and then the SAN storage below that.

 

[KuJaX]

hrmm, well right now i just downloaded ESXi 5.1 with vsphere client. I don't have vCenter or atleast I don't think those features you mentioned are part of the free ESXi.... are they?

I have no problem paying for licensing but not sure what licensing we need. The lab and production server is the same physical server, just different set of hard disks.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

I love Veeam for VM backups. I bought it but they also have a limited version available for free.

 

[power_hour]

Why not just export / import the VM from source to destination host? Bit confused why your lab is separate from your production. vCenter is your best friend here. Use it.

 

[KuJaX]

Why not just export / import the VM from source to destination host? Bit confused why your lab is separate from your production. vCenter is your best friend here. Use it.

I guess maybe i'm confused on this front. I'm only using VSphere. I dont even know what Vcenter is. When I search for it on vmware website it has a bunch of Vcenter options (operations, protect, site recovery manager, etc).

However, I see the "export" feature you are speaking of. I guess I just select the VM, click file->Export and then put it somewhere on my local hard disk.

Then I can simply just do file->import that same set of files from the local hard disk export? I believe that is what you are referring to?

 

[power_hour]

I guess maybe i'm confused on this front. I'm only using VSphere. I dont even know what Vcenter is. When I search for it on vmware website it has a bunch of Vcenter options (operations, protect, site recovery manager, etc).

However, I see the "export" feature you are speaking of. I guess I just select the VM, click file->Export and then put it somewhere on my local hard disk.

Then I can simply just do file->import that same set of files from the local hard disk export? I believe that is what you are referring to?

Export should work in a pinch. Yeah if your not using vCenter then don't worry about it.

 

[Demo24]

I guess maybe i'm confused on this front. I'm only using VSphere. I dont even know what Vcenter is. When I search for it on vmware website it has a bunch of Vcenter options (operations, protect, site recovery manager, etc).

However, I see the "export" feature you are speaking of. I guess I just select the VM, click file->Export and then put it somewhere on my local hard disk.

Then I can simply just do file->import that same set of files from the local hard disk export? I believe that is what you are referring to?

I don't think vcenter is available for free, but you may be able to get it on trial. Basically its a way to centrally manage all of your VM hosts. Using that you can manage updates, have the ability to manage the hosts via web client, and a variety of other things. Because it effectively centralizes all the hosts into one client its quite easy to move the VMS around to other boxes ( provided of course you have vmotion capability and installed).

Now, for free I recommend using veeam, it has a free edition and it will quite easily do this transfer you are wanting. It also allows you to backup the VM somewhere, obviously a bit limited in free mode but effective enough for this purpose.

As far as VMware licensing. The small business kits tend to work well if you just need to get started. I don't recommend the bare essentials kit as its a bit limited, but it does the job. The main thing to contemplate is how many servers you need to virtualize and how many CPUs are in there.

 

[Nothinman]

I guess maybe i'm confused on this front. I'm only using VSphere. I dont even know what Vcenter is. When I search for it on vmware website it has a bunch of Vcenter options (operations, protect, site recovery manager, etc).

However, I see the "export" feature you are speaking of. I guess I just select the VM, click file->Export and then put it somewhere on my local hard disk.

Then I can simply just do file->import that same set of files from the local hard disk export? I believe that is what you are referring to?

vCenter is their management server which gives you high availability, automatic resource balancing (DRS), update manager, etc. Without it you basically have a hypervisor with none of the cool features that make VMware great. You probably want it if you have more than one host.