Good backup solution for vmware esxi?

[n_K]

So I've got my dell poweredge 2950 with VMWare ESXi on it, 2 VMs (one linux one windows server)...

I originally used to just have the server running windows server and backed up using the 12/24GB internal SCSI tape drive and it worked fine!

Now since going to esxi (with a huge list of other additional problems too) there's no support for passthru, but one would think that's OK because you can just connect up a SCSI device to the guest OS and backup normally... Except there's a known esxi bug with no solution that means tape backup fails, it's more than a **** take if I'm honest and it really annoys me that vmware cannot be bothered to fix it.

So, I can no longer backup like that. I did try adding it as a SCSI device to the linux VM and doing a gzip backup of some stuff, it did work but after about 3GB it failed so I gave up with that method, and now I'm left with no known way to backup! :/.

I've got an old RAQ4i with a SCSI port that I could possibly connect the tape backup drive to, and backup over the network but that'd mean I'd need to install net filesystems for linux and I don't really want to, plus the RAQ4 is 100Mbps so backup would take AGES.

So here I am, out of ideas. Does anyone have any suggestions or methods/advice I could use to get backup working again? I'd ideally like to support windows backup so it can backup the 'whole system' and not just selected files and folders so it's easier to recover if something goes wrong. Oh and I did have an idea of using a USB hard drive to backup to, but when I used to plug a hard drive in, the windows guest OS would freeze for about 10 minutes before unfreezing and being usable which is an utter pain, and since I tried connecting a USB device to the linux VM via the esxcli shell, it would appear I can't connect USB devices using the GUI anymore, it gives an error about 'USB node 0/2/0 cannot be found' or something.

(Overall I'd highly recommend anyone thinking of using virtualisation such as ESXi steers well clear, it's been nothing but hassle, slow, buggy and complete rubbish in terms of features, if an OS crashed on just the server itself, the watchdog would kick-in and reboot, but can VM reboot a crashed VM? Can it hell, no support what-so-ever for such a basic feature).

[remixedcat]

Veeam is the universally recommended vmware backup.

[n_K]

Veeam is the universally recommended vmware backup.

Just had a look and despite it looking nice and all, I'm assuming the price tag is well over ?50. Maybe ~?500? :/.

[remixedcat]

Thing is its very much worth it. Is something like acronis cheaper for you???

[vanx]

Veeam is the universally recommended vmware backup.

I'd beg to differ, but rather not open a can of worms.

[n_K]

Well afaik acronis needs a dedicated PC with the backup device attached to it, I'd ideally like to be able to backup using a tape drive connected directly to the host machine.

I wonder if snapshots provide such a functionality? I disabled them but might have a read up on that

[remixedcat]

I'd beg to differ, but rather not open a can of worms.

What trouble u have with veeam? Please provide more info.

[Chicane-UK Veteran]

Depending on how you've been licensed for ESXi, and assuming you're managing it with a Virtual Centre, the "built in" tool VDR isn't terrible for small scale deployments!

And I'm not sure if you're just running it on unsupported hardware or something but ESXi is an industry standard with good reason.. I manage a large scale deployment of 40+ ESX servers running over 400 VM's and it's excellent. Everything works how you'd expect it to, VM's are super reliable... really it's superb, but it is expensive :|

Crashed VM's are managed as part of Virtual Centre so again if you're using standalone hosts, you won't have these sorts of features available to you. You really get to see what VMware can do when you pony up for some licenses.

[Depicus]

If you want cheap and want to get your hands dirty http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-8760 works quite well.

[n_K]

I'm just using bare ESXi on a dell poweredge 2950, using the official dell ESXi 5.x install CD image.

I connect directly to the VMware host, without virtual centre, and I'd imagine it probably is grand with all the benefits of the most expensive license but I've got a single server with 2 VMs on a **** internet connection and nothing on my server makes money so I can't afford and it wouldn't make sense to to over to virtual centre which from what I understand would require an additional dedicated server to run it :s.

By 'crashed hosts' I didn't mean ESXi crashing, the watchdog on the server will still manage that, I mean when a guest OS crashes, ESXi has no support for restarting it or anything.

And I think with the 'unsupported hardware' it was more dell? vmware? not being arsed to support a generation older-than-current (when ESXi was released) server so they didn't bother doing anything fancy and just did the minimum to get it running.

I'll have a look depicus!

[remixedcat]

If you want cheap and want to get your hands dirty http://communities.v...m/docs/DOC-8760 works quite well.

Thanks for the link!!