Esxi Backup
What is the procedure need to be followed to take a backup of 800xA virtual machines in Esxi? Idea is to use the backup if some thing went wrong with running virtual machine.
Answers
This might sound odd but Esxi virtual machines are supposed to be backed up using Acronis or Ghost, just like anyother physical machine.
Do not use Snapshot ever.
Hello,
It´s also possible to use the VMware vCenter Converter, to convert ESXi virtual machine to a VMware Player, so you can keep a copy as backup.
Use a product like Acronis or Veam to save a backup of the virtual machine.
- These products typically snapshot the machine and can cause an interuption of the 800xA services. You can either live with this and make sure you stagger the backups or make backups manually when you are available to monitor the services
- If you are using Acronis / Veam, and want to keep server images then take backups monthly. Don't let the image get more than 90 days old or you can have problems connecting a restored machine to the domain.
- Automate the 800xA system backups in the maintenace structure and keep these up to date. These backups will let you rebuild the system from scratch if required. Minimum weekly backups.
- Rather than trying to keep an image of every server, its often easier to just keep an image of a single blank 800xA server with 800xA software installed but no system ( not joined to a domain ) so you can recreate the server nodes from scratch.
- Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES should you rely on Acronis to backup the oracle database on an IM. You can pretty much guarantee it will fail.
- Assume that your server room is going to catch fire one day and burn everything to the ground. Make sure you have a plan to recover as quickly as possible. If it possibly can go wrong, then it will.
If you have the appropriate VMWare license you can use the Clone function to take a backup of a running machine. You could also clean out the system from your backup (clone).
Regarding restoring an old machine, should it be "tombstoned", i.e. no longer recognised by the domain, you can follow the manuals and remove it from system and domain, log in the local admin account, reconnect it to the domain and then the system.
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