How to I (auto) backup my ESXi guest machines?

[guitarlp]

I've ordered all my parts for my new ESXi build and I'm getting excited. I'm not new to virtualization, but I've never used ESXi before (I have used Hyper-V).

 

Is anybody automatically backing up their ESXi guest OS'? If so, how are you doing it?

 

Due to unRAID using all of my available disks, I don't have enough room in my case to RAID 1 the drive the guest machines will be placed on. I'm going to run the guest OS' on an SSD, and I'd preferably like to make a backup of those machines once a week (automatically would be ideal). Even better, would be if those backups could be pushed to unRAID for redundancy through a network share.

 

What backup plans are you guys using in ESXi?

[mrow]

I have an OpenIndiana VM that runs a ZFS pool that all my other VMs are stored on as a datastore over NFS. ZFS has fault tolerance so if a disk dies I don't loose any data in the zpool. I only have 4 disks in the zpool so I'm just doing RAID-Z1 but I could rebuild the zpool with another disk and do RAID-Z2 and have 2 disk fault tolerance. I'm not too worried about that though.

 

The OI VM is running on an SSD datastore. Once I had the OI VM configured I backed it up to unraid since I haven't, and won't, make any more changes to it so just the one backup is fine.

 

If the SSD dies, I boot to unraid bare metal, copy the OI VM backup to a new SSD. Then boot again with ESXi and I'm back up and running.

[guitarlp]

Interesting. I would like to play around with ZFS someday since it sounds like an amazing file system. I suppose I could eventually throw a few more SSD's in my machine and run those in Raid-Z1 like you to get some redundancy for the datastore.

 

So in your case, your OI is running on an SSD, and you have 4 other drives assigned to OI through RDM? OI then uses software raid to create the RAID-Z1?

 

While not ideal... would I be able to use the MOBO raid controller on my X9SCM-iif to create a RAID1 array, mirror my two SSD's, and use that RAID1 array as my datastore? The SSD is already going to be more then fast enough for my use case, so the performance of stripping isn't important to me right now. But that would at least get me a slight redundancy. From there I could manually copy the VMDK's whenever I choose to unRAID as an actual backup.

 

Still though... I'd love to automate this process somehow. Run my VMDK's on a single disk but have a system in place to copy those to an additional drive at a set time, or even to unRAID.

[mrow]

Interesting. I would like to play around with ZFS someday since it sounds like an amazing file system. I suppose I could eventually throw a few more SSD's in my machine and run those in Raid-Z1 like you to get some redundancy for the datastore.

 

So in your case, your OI is running on an SSD, and you have 4 other drives assigned to OI through RDM? OI then uses software raid to create the RAID-Z1?

 

While not ideal... would I be able to use the MOBO raid controller on my X9SCM-iif to create a RAID1 array, mirror my two SSD's, and use that RAID1 array as my datastore? The SSD is already going to be more then fast enough for my use case, so the performance of stripping isn't important to me right now. But that would at least get me a slight redundancy. From there I could manually copy the VMDK's whenever I choose to unRAID as an actual backup.

 

Still though... I'd love to automate this process somehow. Run my VMDK's on a single disk but have a system in place to copy those to an additional drive at a set time, or even to unRAID.

 

 

My zpool disks interface with my OI VM via an IBM M1015 card passed through to that VM.

 

You need to write off using the onboard SATA ports for anything other than single disk datastores. Your motherboard does not have an onboard hardware RAID controller. Your onboard SATA ports can only do software RAID, and you can't use software RAID for ESXi/datastores. You either have to get a compatable hardware RAID card or do something like I'm doing with ZFS.

 

I only have two disks hooked up to my onboard SATA ports. The SSD datastore used for OI and a 500GB laptop drive datastore used to store things like ISOs that can easily be replaced.

[guitarlp]

Interesting. I would like to play around with ZFS someday since it sounds like an amazing file system. I suppose I could eventually throw a few more SSD's in my machine and run those in Raid-Z1 like you to get some redundancy for the datastore.

 

So in your case, your OI is running on an SSD, and you have 4 other drives assigned to OI through RDM? OI then uses software raid to create the RAID-Z1?

 

While not ideal... would I be able to use the MOBO raid controller on my X9SCM-iif to create a RAID1 array, mirror my two SSD's, and use that RAID1 array as my datastore? The SSD is already going to be more then fast enough for my use case, so the performance of stripping isn't important to me right now. But that would at least get me a slight redundancy. From there I could manually copy the VMDK's whenever I choose to unRAID as an actual backup.

 

Still though... I'd love to automate this process somehow. Run my VMDK's on a single disk but have a system in place to copy those to an additional drive at a set time, or even to unRAID.

 

 

My zpool disks interface with my OI VM via an IBM M1015 card passed through to that VM.

 

You need to write off using the onboard SATA ports for anything other than single disk datastores. Your motherboard does not have an onboard hardware RAID controller. Your onboard SATA ports can only do software RAID, and you can't use software RAID for ESXi/datastores. You either have to get a compatable hardware RAID card or do something like I'm doing with ZFS.

 

I only have two disks hooked up to my onboard SATA ports. The SSD datastore used for OI and a 500GB laptop drive datastore used to store things like ISOs that can easily be replaced.

 

Got it... thanks. So if I want to run RAID 1 or any other type of raid I need to add another RAID controller to my setup.

 

It looks like the M1015 is a software raid controller as well... so I wouldn't be able to slap another one of those in my case to create a RAID-1 datastore. Buying en expensive hardware raid controller is out of the question, so a setup like yours would probably be idea. Add another M1015, pass it through to an OS of my choice, and have that OS create the RAID array to host the datastore.

[mrow]

The easiest thing for you to do would be to use NAS4Free or FreeNAS to setup a ZFS pool and pass through an M1015, like you said. Share that zpool over NFS and add as an NFS datastore. I use OI because I like Solaris, however the setup and configuration is a bit more complicated. NAS4Free or FreeNAS make it very easy and you can setup a RAID-Z1 zpool with as few as three disks.

 

Remember, the storage has to be shared via NFS (well, or iSCSI but that is even more complicated and performs worse as a datastore) to be able to add them as a datastore so doing something like setting up a Windows VM with a software RAID1 array is not really an option.

[WeeboTech]

You can also score an Areca hardware raid controller on eBay.  I got an ARC-1200 for $50 or so.

I scored an 8 port Areca with cache for around $150 with cables.

 

 

These are hardware raid controllers. it all depends on how much you want to layer on your ESX environment and the speed you require.

 

 

In my setup. I'm using a SSD for the datastore and I plan to rsync it to a magnetic disk (2tb) data store periodically.

I'll probably rsync it to the unRAID server too.

 

 

There's a statically compiled rsync binary for ESX floating around the net.

[mrow]

There's a statically compiled rsync binary for ESX floating around the net.

 

 

I was wondering if there was something like that out there. I'll have to do some googling.

[WeeboTech]

There's a statically compiled rsync binary for ESX floating around the net.

 

I was wondering if there was something like that out there. I'll have to do some googling.

 

 

I read on one post with a Centos 3.6 (3.9)?? or RHEL 3.6 (3.9)?? distro you can statically compile binaries that will work on ESX.  I can't remember which version, I do remember having to scour the internet for it cuz it's so old.

I have to revisit this in the near future. I want to compile TFTP server so I can move my PXE boot onto the raw ESX datastore.

[brian89gp]

HP P410 (SAS) with a BBWC will run you less then $150 on ebay and support is good in ESX.

[guitarlp]

Thanks for the replies so far guys... I'll look into some cheaper hardware RAID controllers on eBay, as well as the rsync binary.

 

Has anyone used ghettoVCB?

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-8760

 

Looks like that may do what I'm looking for.

[WeeboTech]

I've never used it, however it looks like a good cheap alternative.