Forum ©XSIBackup: ©VMWare ©ESXi Backup Software

If you just want an incremental backup, as fast as possible, use (c)OneDiff. You can optionally use --certify-backup=yes to get a hash certification proof upon backup completion.

/path/to/xsibackup --backupid=00 --time="Mon 00:00|Tue 00:00|Wed 00:00|Thu 00:00|Fri 00:00|Sat 00:00|Sun 00:00|Mon 12:00|Tue 12:00|Wed 12:00|Thu 12:00|Fri 12:00|Sat 12:00" --backup-prog=onediff --backup-point="/vmfs/volumes/backup1" --backup-type=custom --backup-vms="W701,Linux01" --mail-to=you@yourdomain.com --use-smtp=1 --certify-backup=yes

If you want an incremental backup but also archiving your VMs with deduplication and a high space utilization level use (c)XSITools program with compression enabled. You can also optionally use --certify-backup=yes

/path/to/xsibackup --backupid=01 --time="Mon 00:00|Tue 00:00|Wed 00:00|Thu 00:00|Fri 00:00|Sat 00:00|Sun 00:00|Mon 12:00|Tue 12:00|Wed 12:00|Thu 12:00|Fri 12:00|Sat 12:00" --backup-prog=xsitools:z --backup-point="/vmfs/volumes/backup1" --backup-type=custom --backup-vms="W701,Linux01" --mail-to=you@yourdomain.com --use-smtp=1 --certify-backup=yes

As you want an additional full backup on Sundays, we'll add Sunday's noon backup to a different job that will use --on-success and --on-error event handlers to trigger another backup job upon finishing. This full backup job will not need the --time argument, as will be triggered by a previous backup job. --certify-backup=yes is optional in all cases.

/path/to/xsibackup --backupid=02 --time="Sun 12:00" --backup-prog=xsitools:z --backup-point="/vmfs/volumes/backup1" --backup-type=custom --backup-vms="W701,Linux01" --mail-to=you@yourdomain.com --use-smtp=1 --certify-backup=yes --on-success="backupid->03" --on-error="backupid->03"

/path/to/xsibackup --backupid=03 --backup-prog=vmkfstools --date-dir=yes --backup-point="/vmfs/volumes/backup2" --backup-type=custom --backup-vms="W701,Linux01" --mail-to=you@yourdomain.com --use-smtp=1 --certify-backup=yes

You can backup to a datastore or you can create a script that deletes your old snapshots after the backup cycle has finished.

I guess you mean that the remote baackup halts there.
There's a small bug that could affect remote backups, we just sent you a fix.
In any case, it could be that XSIBackup is not able ro determine the remote FS type. Contact support if you still have the problem.

That's way below the error:

535 Authentication Credentials Invalid

It makes no sense to try to interpret a derived error message before actually fixing the primary one.

The regexp feature will come out with v 10.0.4, still preparing.

You need to configure your e-mail server to allow pipelining, you probably have some parameter like reject_unauth_pipelining activated somewhere. Use this post as a starting point https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic … Sd4mp0katY

In any case, if you are not an expert mailmaster, just use any gmail.com, hotmail.com, yahoo.com, etc... account, we have tested this servers with XSIBackup and they are free to use.

Yes, of course, that is basic XSIBackup functioning. XSIBackup will not even notice the difference between the Free or licensed version of ESXi.

XSIBackup free will allow you to backup to both, local and remote dedicated servers. XSIBACKUP-PRO will allow to transfer just changed blocks to the remote cloud server without any delta checksum lag. Upcoming XSIBACKUP-PRO 10.0.0 will combine those characteristics with XSIDiff which will make first upload much faster than Rsync by just copying used blocks.

VPSs are a cheap option to host some HTTP or e-mail server, definetely not something to use as VM cloud backup storage. CentOS 7 is not as production proven as CentOS 6.8 and ESXi 6.5.0 is not the best production ready ESXi distribution available. Choosing the right versions of an OS to use in production requires a lot of testing and benchmarking. Happily, you have a lot of reviews and forums available in the Internet where you can retrieve information about what are the best choices available.

As a rule of thumb: never use the latest version of anything, unless it has empirically proven to be stable enough and offers some new feature that you objectively need.

XSIBackup allows you to direcly use a VM backup, it's ready to be switched on in the backup location, unless you use Borg or XSITools as the backup end, which will require you to restore the backup by using the restore module. It's an easy operation, just running a command will restore your VM wherever you want at LAN speeds +- 60 mb/s.

If you backup in a cloud, make some quick figures to have an aproximate idea of how long would it take to restore your backups. Per instance, a 100 gb. VM would take around 6 h. to complete, provided that you have a 100 mbps FO that can sustain an average of 4 to 5 mb/s

There's always a first time for everything ;-)

### 2017-08-03 Admin update ###

To trigger scripts from an outer system by using OpenSSH client use the -t SSH option to redirect output to your client.

https://33hops.com/xsibackup-remote-execution.html

### 2017-08-03 Admin update ###

Mmm, I don't know if I'm getting you right. If you want to execute a backup job (./xsibackup --backup-program --backup-type=custom...) from a remote cron:

1 - You need to make sure your remote Linux system can run SSH commands passwordlessly. Add your Linux cron system's (the system from where you want to execute the job) rsa pub key to the authorized_keys file at the ESXi server where the job is to be executed. Don't have an RSA key pair?, first of all generate one, how?, by using OpenSSL binary https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cryptogra … ng_OpenSSL

2 - Run the job manually

ssh -vv -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -i /path/to/your/key/xsibackup_id_rsa root@your.esxihost.com "/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/xsi-dir/xsibackup backup-job"

with the -vvv (verbose) option to actually see what's being sent to the ESXi host, as some characters will for sure need to be escaped.

3 - Once you have verified that the command gets to the server as it should, whithout any unescaped characters that might break its syntax coherence, add it to your root crontab: /etc/crontab at the triggering Linux box. Avoid using crontab -e and use /etc/crontab directly to be more straight and avoid security blockings.

We offer a working solution: xsibackup-cron, you can use it to trigger your backups and even other scripts.

You cannot assume ESXi is Linux and that things will work as you expect. ESXi is not Linux, thus thoughts as Kevin's "normal behavior", just don't apply in this case. ESXi is somewhat resembling Linux, with an extremely cut down shell and with strategically situated bugs as well as reduced functionality in every component.

I'll borrow Niki Lauda's famous quote to say: programming scripts under ESXi is like piloting a helicopter in a telephone box. So, follow our advice or put your helmet on.

I'm not saying you can't do it, there's a lot of really smart people around this forum, but fighting against ESXi's Linux false resemblance will require a lot of time and will from your part. Thus, if you are a backup professional that just wants to set thing up, I would not bother; follow our advice or even buy our PRO version to support our efforts.

Yes, it's possible to do so, it's not supported by (c)VMWare though

Add a USB device as a VMFS datastore to (c)ESXi