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AKLEngineer

Member

Registered: 2018-09-27

Posts: 3

XSIbackup Free 11.0.1 - Questions on Cron/Scheduled Jobs and Timestamp

Hi:

I've just installed XSIBackup Free 11.0.1 on my VMware Host version 6.5, and I managed to perform a successful backup using the manual command-line options.

I am now looking at getting XSIbackup to backup my VM on a scheduled basis (I only need weekly backup), so I started looking at the Cron.  I've then realised some options have "changed", especialyl with regards to the cron (tab) files and the --backup-prog option.

Looking at the default 001 file under the xsi-dir/jobs directory, this is what I see:

______________________________________________________________________
# This is a backup job file example. It starts with the path to your
# xsibackup file and ends with the redirection to the log file. Please
# do make sure that you keep first and last lines, changing paths to
# match your working environment.

"/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/xsi-dir/xsibackup" \
--backup-prog=XSITools:z \
--certify-backup=yes \
--backup-point=/vmfs/volumes/backup/$( date +%Y%m'00000000' ) \
--backup-type=Running \
--backup-how=Hot \
--remote-xsipath=/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/xsi-dir \
--use-smtp=1 \
--mail-to=email@dmiannmame.com \
--backup-id=001 \
--description="XSITools backup of production VMs" \
--on-success="backupId->002" \
--on-error="backupId->002" \
--exec=yes >> "/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/xsi-dir/var/logs/xsibackup.log"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As I didn't want the backups to be timestamped, I think I could remove the $( date +%Y%m'00000000' ) part from the --backup-point, so that it looks like  --backup-point=/vmfs/volumes/backup \.  However, when I tried execuitng ./xsibackup --run-job=001, I noted that a timestamped and directory still gets created.

I then read further along the forums and help (man) pages and realsied I could also use vmkfstools if I only want a simple backup/copy as I probavbly don't need the advanced features of xsitools, however, I received an error when substituting --backup-prog with vmkfstools, saying my backup-point datastore is on a compressed repository, i.e.:

XSITools Error XSITCMP1: /vmfs/volumes/NAS-datastore is a compressed repository, you must enable compression to backup to it

Below is my alternative job file (002):

# This is a backup job file example. It starts with the path to your
# xsibackup file and ends with the redirection to the log file. Please
# do make sure that you keep first and last lines, changing paths to
# match your working environment.

"/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/xsi-dir/xsibackup" \
--backup-prog=vmkfstools \
--certify-backup=yes \
--backup-point=/vmfs/volumes/backup/ \
--backup-type=Running \
--backup-how=Hot \
--remote-xsipath=/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/xsi-dir \
--use-smtp=1 \
--mail-to=email@domainname.com \
--backup-id=002 \
--description="XSITools backup of production VMs" \
--on-success="backupId->002" \
--on-error="backupId->002" \
--exec=yes >> "/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/xsi-dir/var/logs/xsibackup.log"

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Does anyone have any ideas what could be wrong?  How can I do a smple, scheduled, weekly backup and a datastore *without* timestamped directory (i.e. it OK to overwrite the backups each time).  My backup-point datastore is located on a NAS driver mounted as NFS on the ESXI host.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Thanks very much.

Kind Regards
Chuck

admin

Administrator

Registered: 2017-04-21

Posts: 2,072

Re: XSIbackup Free 11.0.1 - Questions on Cron/Scheduled Jobs and Timestamp

This is a message printed by the XSITools module, so things must be getting mixed somewhere somehow.

XSITools Error XSITCMP1

Read the details of how things work in version 11:
[url=https://33hops.com/xsibackup-free-11-things-that-have-changed.html](c)XSIBackup Classic: changes in version 11.0.0[/url]

Prepare your job and run it with the --run-backup=001 argument.
Make sure you kill any remain from previous attempts eventually loaded:
[url]https://33hops.com/xsibackup-most-common-issues.html[/url]

AKLEngineer

Member

Registered: 2018-09-27

Posts: 3

Re: XSIbackup Free 11.0.1 - Questions on Cron/Scheduled Jobs and Timestamp

Thanks for your tips and assistance on this.  I'll take a look at the links you shared and work may way through as to what could be wrong.

Cheers
Chuck