Using the vMA you can backup and restore individual ESXi hosts using the vicfg-cfgbackup command. If you log into your vMA and type vicfg-cfg-backup –help you get some of the following information:
Synopsis: /usr/bin/vicfg-cfgbackup OPTIONS [<backupfile>] Command-specific options: --force -f Force the restore of the configuration. --load -l Restore configuration onto the host --quiet -q Do not prompt for user confirmation. --reset -r Resets host, restore to factory settings. --save -s Backup the host configuration.
So in order to backup your ESXi host you just need to select a host and do a -s. I like to do these sort of things automatically. Here is my setup:
- Create a location for backups
mkdir ~/backup
- Create a script to do backups
#!/bin/bash
# Script created by Joseph Griffiths
# bloodygranola.com
# Date to create a unique file
date=`/bin/date '+%m-%d-%y-%H-%M'`;
# Directory to put the backup
backupdir="/home/vi-admin/backup"
# How many days we should keep backups
days="30"
# Function to do backup
function backup(){
/opt/vmware/vma/bin/vifptarget -s $1
/usr/bin/vicfg-cfgbackup -s $backupdir/$1-$date.bak
}
# Do the backup
backup "esxi01.vclass.local";
backup "esxi02.vclass.local";
# Clean up
find $backupdir -mtime +$days -exec rm -rf {} \;
Well we want to run this automatically each day correct? We can do that with crontab lets set it for 2 am everyday
crontab -e
Enter the following:
0 2 * * * /home/vi-admin/backup.sh > /dev/null 2>&1
What about restoring?
It’s done with the same command except the -f for force and -l for load
vicfg-cfgbackup -f -l filename