VCB basic usage - VM full backup over NFS

Let's go to practice a bit. Let's have a NFS server in the network available. And we would like to backup virtual machines (VMs) from one of our ESX hosts directly to it, without usage of any specialized backup software.

I don't have to forget to say that VCB is available in your ESX host. There is installed VMware-esx-backuptools package which contains almost all the mentioned commands before - vcbVmName, vcbMounter and vcbRestore. The vcbRestore utility is available only with ESX and it is used to restore a virtual machine from full backup. Additionally, the missing mountVm command is available with VCB for Windows only. Don't forget to keep in mind that VCB commands for ESX are case-sensitive beause of service console based on Linux.

Firstly, we need a running NFS server. The configuration is straightforward with any Linux distro. Install required packages, edit /etc/exports configuration file and paste here a directory which will be used for backup of VMs. Start NFS server and reconfigure firewall to allow access to it (or simply stop it). For details, check the related documentation. If you would like I can write some more notes about it.

So, let's have a NFS server with IP address 192.168.1.1 (from C class). The exported directory is the /backup/vm directory. Secondly, we need to permit NFS client at the ESX host. By default, outgoing connections from any ESX host are blocked. You can do it via VI client or from the service console like this:

esxcfg-firewall -e nfsClient

You can check all the available services with:

esxcfg-firewall -s

To check if the nfsClient service was enabled, run this:

esxcfg-firewall -q nfsClient

If so, you will receive:

Service nfsClient is enabled.

Finally, we need a backup script whose only task is to backup available VMs. The script can be scheduled at ESX host via cron service or from the NFS backup server. It's your choice. The script follows:

#!/bin/sh

BACKUP_SERVER="192.168.1.1"
BACKUP_DIR="/backup/vm"
MOUNT_DIR="/backup/snap"

[ -d $MOUNT_DIR ] || mkdir -p "$MOUNT_DIR" || exit 1

VM_BACKUP="`vcbVmName -s any: | grep name: | cut -d':' -f2`"

if [ ! -z "$VM_BACKUP" ]; then
    mount $BACKUP_SERVER:$BACKUP_DIR $MOUNT_DIR || exit 1

     for VM in $VM_BACKUP; do
             vcbMounter -a name:$VM -r $MOUNT_DIR/$VM
     done

     umount $MOUNT_DIR
fi

exit 0

Now, simple description of the script. At the beginning, there are defined some variables - the NFS server IP address, the exported directory and the local mount point. Then, the available VMs are listed and saved in a variable. The exported directory from the NFS server is mounted and with the vcbMounter command the VMs are backuped. Finally, the directory is unmounted. If you want to use the commands without authentication credentials, you need to define them in the file /etc/vmware/backuptools.conf. Exactly, these parameters are required:

VCHOST=127.0.0.1
USERNAME=admin_user
PASSWORD=admin_user_password

So, the task to backup virtual machines isn't so sophisticated. In the next article, I'm going to restore them with vcbRestore command.