Being a proprietary tool, VMWare has a problem in common with Windows: it’s full off proprietary API’s you have to go through to be able to pull a backup. Also, whilst VMWare (ESX, but in practice also ESXi) has a unix/Linux like management environment, you don’t get all the tools you’d want to do your thing. Rsync to name one.

Of course, I you walk the line, buy sufficient licenses and extra software, you get to use VCB and can interconnect with “Supported” software like Symantec Backup Exec and the like.

But here and know, all I wanted, next to regular backups, was being able to easily pull backups to a Linux backup server (just a host with plent of disk space, and all the standard software I wanted.) Now, I found it hard to find the right solution to do that. Lots of custom scripts, but nothing that quickly worked. Often ugly scripts or hacks.

So far, the best solution i sticked to is the GhettoVCB script. Add a an NFS export from the Linux backup server to VMWare as a Datastore, and after a simple config, just run the script.

Downside of this approach, when used for a full ESX with SAN environment, is that you have to run in on the virtual host machines themselves, you can’t grab it over a separate VCB host which can haz its own SAN connection.

It works, but I still feel it’s awkward, not sure why. Anybody other suggestions for plain and simple backup tools for vmware?

Ze hebben ook te kort op mijn toestel gestaan op er een backup van te hebben. Ik werk met een sync systeem die ieder uur mijn data van mijn desktop naar mijn server versast, en de laatste versie van die dag komt dan in de normale server backup terecht, waar met rsnapshot een historiek wordt van bijgehouden. Blijkbaar heb ik die foto’s dus geïmporteerd en gewist op dezelfde dag.

Uiteraard heb ik mijn 3 maandelijkse “Empty Trash” net in de voorbije maand gedaan. Of had ik die foto’s commandline en niet via mijn desktop file manager gewist.

Maar gezien dat mijn $HOME volledig in de backup zit, zit dus ook ~/.local/share/Trash/files . En in de daily.5/daily.6/weekly.0/weekly.1 versies van die Trash zaten wel nog mijn foto’s

Handig die backups waar je niet moet naar omzien en die je dus niet kan vergeten.

Often I praise the good things when stuff is neatly integrated, and different software talks nicely through different API’s.
It’s something where Microsoft gets things done, where OSS keeps changing the API.

But as allways, it gets ugly when you realise you only have this (proprietary) API to talk through. you only get to patch something with binary patches you select on filtering by a specific error message.

Error and solution conditions which sometimes do not match the exact environment and versions you behave in. This problem was patched in the lateest service pack of the preceding version. D’uh. And that often is not even a regression.

It’s that bad that even with lots of experience, you don’t get to fix the problem by gut feeling – short of logic as usual. You’re really on your own, ’cause the software version is that new that even google isn’t helpfull. Even all those years of experience don’t give the assurance of where to look, what kind of problem you’re facing, and how fast (or not) you will solve the problem.

Just googling one specific error message giving 3 hits in return (at least from here), pointing to some not publicly released hotfix is one of the many possible trial and error solutions.

Luckily it helped.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, cheer, party and dance. My customer has again backups, the first since one week.

Until it will again suddenly stop working that is.

Windows really is full of binary closed crap. And don’t ask how often I needed to reboot. Even installing the bloody hotfix took twice: one to be able to start the patch process (it hang because some windows update process already hung before), and one after the setup, of course.

Windows still needs too many reboots. It even sometimes asks for it after an ip address change.