WilliamLam.com

How To Backup & Restore Free ESXi Host Configuration

by // 23 Comments

ESXi host configurations can easily be backed up and restored using either the vCLI's vicfg-cfgbackup or PowerCLI's Get-VMHostFirmware cmdlet. These commands along with others that perform "write" operations are only supported when you have a (paid) licensed version of ESXi. If you are using free ESXi, the remote commands are only available for "read-only" operations. For more details, please refer to this article here.

Note: In my personal opinion, it is much quicker and more efficient to re-install ESXi and apply your configurations using either a scripted deployment such as kickstart or a combination along with post configuration scripts. Re-installs become extremely trivial when you centralize your ESXi host configurations, even for small setups.

Having said that, if you are running free ESXi in a small shop or in a home lab and wish to backup your ESXi host configurations, you can still do so by leveraging a neat little tool called vim-cmd found within the ESXi Shell. There is a section under hostsvc/firmware which manages the ESXi host configuration which also uses the same vSphere APIs that both vicfg-cfgbackup & Get-VMHostFirmeware command uses.

Under this section of vim-cmd, there are four commands:

  • backup_config   
  • reset_config    
  • restore_config  
  • sync_config

Prior to actually backing up your ESXi host configuration, run the following command which will flush the ESXi configuration changes:

vim-cmd hostsvc/firmware/sync_config

To backup the ESXi host configurations, run the following command which will generate a file that will be automatically stored in /scratch/downloads and can also be downloaded from a web browser using the URL shown from the output:

vim-cmd hostsvc/firmware/backup_config

Before restoring your ESXi host configurations, you will need to ensure the file is renamed to configBundle.tgz and stored under /tmp directory. You will also need to ensure the ESXi host is placed in maintenance mode by running the following command:

vim-cmd hostsvc/maintenance_mode_enter

To restore the ESXi host configurations, run the following command and specify the backup configuration file which should reside in /tmp/configBundle.tgz:

vim-cmd hostsvc/firmware/restore_config /tmp/configBundle.tgz

Note: Upon completing the restore, it will automatically reboot your ESXi host.

Here is a screenshot using the above commands to backup and then restore ESXi host:

Note: You can not restore an ESXi host using a configuration file backed up from a different host.

New Updates for ghettoVCB & ghettoVCB-restore

by // 11 Comments

I know it has taken me awhile, but I finally found some time over the last week and half to go through my entire backlog of bugs, issues, feature requests, etc. and have updated both my ghettoVCB and ghettoVCB-restore script. Here is a quick summary of the new enhancements in this release:

  • ghettoVCB & ghettoVCB-restore supports ESXi 5.1
    • This was a fairly simple change by modifying the version number in the script which I noticed several users sharing the details in the VMTN forums. However, there were a few changes with the release of ESXi 5.1 that caused some initial issues which now have all been resolved in this release. For some of those details, take a look at the "Fixes" section of the change log.
  • Support for individual VM backup via command-line and added new -m flag
    • This has been requested a few times and the idea is if you have a single VM to backup, it was extra work to create a file containing the name of the VM. So now you can specify a single VM backup via the command-line
  • Support VM(s) with existing snapshots and added new configuration variable called ALLOW_VMS_WITH_SNAPSHOTS_TO_BE_BACKEDUP 
    •  This is probably the most requested feature I have seen and as many of you know my personal stance on snapshots, though they can be extremely useful they can also be dangerous when miss-used. I have seen too many VMTN posts about admins finding out they have a 300-500GB snapshot they need to commit and that they are also out of space/etc. However, I decided to support this use case as it was recently brought to my attention that some of the commercial backup solutions that support VMs with existing snapshots just consolidate all snapshots prior to backup. If this feature is enabled, it will consolidate ALL existing snapshots on the VM prior to running a backup.
  • Support multiple running instances of ghettoVCB running and added a new -w flag
    • Today, you can only run a single instance of ghettoVCB, there have been several requests to support running multiple instance and this was a feature submitted which allows you to specify a separate working directory for ghettoVCB. Users should try to minimize the number of instances running as there is a limited amount of resources in the ESXi Shell which can potentially impact your host. Note, this is an experimental feature.
  • Configure VM shutdown/startup order and added two new configuration variables called VM_SHUTDOWN_ORDER and VM_STARTUP_ORDER 
    • This was another submitted feature which allows you to specify the order if which VMs should be shutdown and started back up for which have a dependency between each other. 
  • Support changing custom VM name during restore
    • ghettoVCB-restore has been updated to allow for an optional 4th parameter in the restore file for users to specify an alternate VM name for the restored VM. This can be useful if want to restore the VM alongside the original VM for backup validation purposes (which everyone should do) and by disconnecting the network, you would not be impacting your existing VM while you perform your verification.
  •  Documentation updates

I highly recommend you take a look at the change log for more details (or Github diff more exact changes in the code) as well as the ghettoVCB documentation which has been updated for all the latest changes including feedback from the community. I would also like to thank the ghettoVCB/ghettoVCB-restore community for the feedback and comments you have provided as well as the following users: daviderickson, sethsp, vlooy, gvalkov, jonmchan, fryrpc and aspineux who have all submitted patches for bug fixes and feature requests via the ghettoVCB github repository

I hope you enjoy these two releases and if you run into any troubles, please post in the ghettoVCB VMTN group forum.