Forum ©XSIBackup: ©VMWare ©ESXi Backup Software

admin

Administrator

Registered: 2017-04-21

Posts: 2,057

Re: How to exclude VM's rather then include

Please, note this thread corresponds to an old software edition - (c)XSIBackup Classic - which has been deprecated. Use our latest software edition: (c)XSIBackup-DC and refer to its manual to backup your (c)ESXi VMs as of 2021

ColtB117

Member

Registered: 2022-03-23

Posts: 9

Re: How to exclude VM's rather then include

I know this is old, but this works for me on the free version.

./xsibackup --backup "VMs($(vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms|awk '{print $2}'|awk '(NR>1)'|grep -v NameOrPatternOfVMtoExclude|sed ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n/,/g'))" /path/to/back/location

It doesn't seem the free version has a regex engine that can process negative lookaheads i.e. ^(?!NameOrPatternOfVMtoExclude).
Don't take this as knocking it. It is an impressive offering. If you want the move advanced features, you need to shell out the $.

admin

Administrator

Registered: 2017-04-21

Posts: 2,057

Re: How to exclude VM's rather then include

Thank you for your snippet, I'm sure others will find it valuable.

(c)XSIBackup Classic has been deprecated and is no longer maintained, nonetheless it's flexible enough to allow solutions like yours when it comes to exclude VMs.

I will quote Mr. Miyagi once more (or was it Spiderman) to say: "with great power comes great responsability".

The most flexible program is an empty .c file where you type some C Language sentences.  The most inflexible program is a plain button that you push and all that you want is magically done as a pre-stablished set of hardcoded routines.

(c)XSIBackup Classic is somewhere in between. It is inflexible enough to not make users have the feeling that they have to program their own backup script, yet flexible enough to allow them to fulfill almost anything related to backing up their VMs quite rapidly, as your example demonstrates.