Hello good people of teksyndictate , I really need some help or suggestion regarding, how or what softwares are able to do incremental backups of Virtual OS in VMware. (Vmdk) I was told by my colleague who is working as MIS that it's not possible of doing incremental backups of Esxi. But some how that doesn't feel right to me. I need a definitive answer of 1. Is it possible to do incremental backup of Esxi 2. What softwares would you suggest.
Or there are some smart ways of set up disk size so that it would be easier to back up . Ex. Small OS drive size and store the files in another drives. Any suggestions are much appreciated Thank you very much
I am not sure that gonna work, but have you set your vmdk images to be fixed size or automatically growing on the host file system? If they grow aromatically I guess any backup software capable of doing incremental backups would back them up just as any other file as well and only save the changes to the file.
Only problem I see will be that you most likely will have to freeze or shutdown the VMs while the backup is performed.
@dreamwalker can i ask what kind of licensing you have for VMware? are you using Vsphere? or a vcenter server? or just stand alone ESXi hosts? there are different options depending on you tier of license. what i do is one Full backup monthly and inc in between, you can set VMDK block size limits and the Max file size in the configuration menu of the Datastore those VMDKs are living. Just Go to: Datastores and Datastore Clustes > click the datastore said VMDK are living > Configuration tab > properties (on the top right of the "Datastore details"> and you should see it on the right in the 'Format' box.
another question is; Are you using snapshots?
let me know if you need help finding that Datastores Detail screen.
Thank everyone for your help, @th3z0ne , it's a production server so it's not possible to shutdown the VM from performance backup .
@HelloMrOwl , I found uranium backup was / is what I had in mind. But I will definitely look into unitrends for sure.
@ST3V3 I believe the license we are using is Vcenter but I'll have to check with MIS to be sure. Sorry to sound such a noob but I am new to the company and sadly the office politics are through the roof, sometimes it's hard for me to access to Infos that I seek. Not to mention I am not IT major nor my position in the company is IT related, I just happens to like open source stuff and technology.
Upon reading your snapshot question , I googled and realized that there is snapshot functions in Vsphere. How silly of me. Am I safe to assume that by using the snapshot functions , I can do full back up and incremental backup as well? I really hope I can get my hands on Vsphere or Vcenter in the company but till I cut through all the red tapes , all I can do is wait for clearances to come through. Thank you for helping and I will update as long as I have more infos
Snapshots are increments of the running state of the VM Everytime you snapshot it, the snapshot contains the difference between VM stage and snappshot time.
Yea don't treat Vmware snapshots as backups, they are different, I asked because of your worries about VMDK size If you have VMs running on old snapshots the delta files will grow, and grow and grow until you remove the snap and let esxi create a new. I have seen a lot of times at clients the snapshots making the VMDKs huge because they never were purged.
There are a few software suites you can use for Inc backups. There are a few free (mentioned above) But for enterprise grade, you'll want to look into something like Veam or Symantec BackUp exec, I have used both and prefer Veam.
The best way to learn this stuff is to get your hands on some old hardware, install a hypervisor, you can even use VMware (free for 30days/ reinstall ESXi after trial is over) and bash around. Hands on with this stuff in my opinion is the best way to get the exposure, I have my VCP very and I got more experience in a lab than I ever did a class room.