lamw/ghettoVCB: ghettoVCB

I found out that I had some very old draft notes below, but since then the source has moved to github: lamw/ghettoVCB: ghettoVCB.

Since I find VIB easier to use than the Offline Bundle (for differences see [WayBack] VIB vs. Offline Bundle and [WayBack] VMware Front Experience: ESXi Community Packaging Tools) these are the VIB steps to get it installed:

1. Download https://github.com/lamw/ghettoVCB/raw/master/vghetto-ghettoVCB.vib
2. Put it in the /tmp directory on your ESXi box (using for instance FileZilla, WinSCP, SCP or other tools)
3. Install it using esxcli software vib install -v /tmp/vghetto-ghettoVCB.vib -f

Then use it to make backups or restores as described at:

• [WayBack] Backing up VMware ESXi VMs with ghettoVCB – Miscellaneous Knowledge
• [WayBack] ghettoVCB.sh – Free alternative for backing up … |VMware Communities

Note that contrary to the documentation, the config file has moved to /etc/ghettovcb/ghettoVCB.conf.

Because of Keeping your root visorfs clean: point the path to your own binaries stored on a vmfs volume I’m using a copy of that stored in my local-bin directory (which is backed-up by rsync to another disk) and a small ghettoVcb.sh bootstrap script referencing that config-file, so the backup command for one command now is this:

ghettoVcb.sh -m diaspore.opensuse-Tumbleweed-x64

or this for all VMs (about 2 hours from NVME SSD to HDD; will probably make this a 2 stage thing):

ghettoVcb.sh -a

VMs are backed-up under the directory specified in VM_BACKUP_VOLUME(below that’s ./) in a schema like this:

./diaspore.opensuse-Tumbleweed-x64
./diaspore.opensuse-Tumbleweed-x64/diaspore.opensuse-Tumbleweed-x64-2017-09-24_16-07-08
./diaspore.opensuse-Tumbleweed-x64/diaspore.opensuse-Tumbleweed-x64-2017-09-24_16-07-08/diaspore.opensuse-Tumbleweed-x64.vmx
./diaspore.opensuse-Tumbleweed-x64/diaspore.opensuse-Tumbleweed-x64-2017-09-24_16-07-08/diaspore.opensuse-Tumbleweed-x64-flat.vmdk
./diaspore.opensuse-Tumbleweed-x64/diaspore.opensuse-Tumbleweed-x64-2017-09-24_16-07-08/diaspore.opensuse-Tumbleweed-x64.vmdk
./diaspore.opensuse-Tumbleweed-x64/diaspore.opensuse-Tumbleweed-x64-2017-09-24_16-07-08/STATUS.ok

In the future, I might move to an NFS based back-up based on these links:

• [WayBack] VM sicherung mit ghettoVCB für ESXi | Think Tank Blog (also has crontab trick using /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh to modify the crontab, then restarting cron)
• [WayBack] [GUIDE] Scheduled backup your ESXi VMs to unRAID with ghettoVCB – Virtualizing unRAID – Lime Technology
• [WayBack] ESXi 5.0/GhettoVCB with NFS on FreeNAS 8.2

–jeroen

Very old notes:

• 20150531 – [WayBack] ghettoVCB VIB & offline bundle for ESXi | virtuallyGhetto
• 20140919 – ghettoVCB.sh – Free alternative for backing up … | VMware Communities.
• 20110223 –
  Research QueueESXi backupghettoVCBhttp://blog.peacon.co.uk/completely-free-backup-for-esxi/http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2010/10/how-to-backup-vms-in-esx-onto-dropbox.htmlMKSBackup for VMware ESX(i).
• 20100804 –VMware Communities: ghettoVCBg2 – Free alternative for backing up VMs in ESX(i) 3.5 and 4.x (no SSH console required!).Newer version: http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-9984VMware Communities: ghettoVCBg2.pl – Free alternative for backing up VMs in ESX(i) 3.5 and 4.x (no SSH console required!).

–jeroen