Copying files from ESXi 4.1 to unRAID - ssh issue

[queeg]

I need help figuring out how to copy backed up VM's on my ESXi server to my unRAID server as a console process running from some third machine.

 

I have a process for backing up VM's on ESXi that backs them to a location on the ESXi server's datastore.  After the backup occurs I want to copy/move the backuped files from ESXi to my unRAID server.  The copy process is where I'm having problems.

 

What works:

Copying small files with pscp or WinSCP from several different Windows machines seems to work fine.  Also, using Putty I can connect to both the ESXi host and view the files and unRAID and view files.

 

What fails:

Trying to copy large files like 8GB for example and the process aborts within seconds.  It appears that the connection is interuppted from the ESXi host's end.  pscp and WinSCP both segfault on every machine (win7 and win2k).

 

Note: Using Veeam Backup and FastSCP I can copy large files but it's a GUI only interface.

 

Here are some examples of the command line.  The -unsafe flag allows wildcarding on the host side.  It works. Using this the small files get copied and the larger is ignored for unknown reason.  

pscp.exe -P 22 -q -batch -pw ******* -unsafe [email protected]:/vmfs/volumes/SataDisk1/DAVES_BACKUPS/sparehead7/sparehead7-2010-12-13_07-53-03/* c:\sparehead7-Sun

 

Using this the small files sparehead7.vmx or sparehead7.vmdk are copied.  The sparehead7-flat.vmdk aborts.

pscp.exe -P 22 -q -batch -pw ******* [email protected]:/vmfs/volumes/SataDisk1/DAVES_BACKUPS/sparehead7/sparehead7-2010-12-13_07-53-03/sparehead7.vmx c:\sparehead7-Sun

pscp.exe -P 22 -q -batch -pw ******* [email protected]:/vmfs/volumes/SataDisk1/DAVES_BACKUPS/sparehead7/sparehead7-2010-12-13_07-53-03/sparehead7.vmdk c:\sparehead7-Sun

pscp.exe -P 22 -q -batch -pw ******* [email protected]:/vmfs/volumes/SataDisk1/DAVES_BACKUPS/sparehead7/sparehead7-2010-12-13_07-53-03/sparehead7-flat.vmdk c:\sparehead7-Sun

 

I simplified the destination in the examples so it was local but in practice the results were same when having unRAID be the destination using \\queeg\esxi\sparehead7-Sun

 

[Spectrum]

I think I would start by troubleshooting what is causing the interrupts on the ESXi machine; that does NOT sound normal.  That said, if it is something to do with pscp, you could try installing cygwin to get a bash shell and a "native" scp application that might behave better.

 

Another line might be setting up the ssh client libs on the unRAID box and initiating the transfer from the unRAID box via a cron job or from another system using plink.  I haven't tried getting openSSH up and running on unRAID so I can't say how hard this would be or how well it would work, but there is an unMENU package for it

 

All in all I think you would be best served by figuring out what is causing the interrupts and solving that problem.