xsibackup(fork from http://sourceforge.net/projects/xsibackup)
XSIBACKUP 2.1.2 Automated Backups for ESXi 5.X
Copyright (C) 2013 33HOPS, Sistemas de Información y Redes, S.L.
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
IMPORTANT:
If you receive any arror and want to contact us please provide the argument list as parsed to XSIBackup otherwise we cannot figure out what's going wrong.
XSIBackup is compatible with ESXi 5.1.0 and ESXi 5.5.0, pressumably it is also compatible with ESXi version 5.0.0 but this has not been fully tested. It has not been tested at all with versions prior to ESXi 5, in any case if you have time you can give it a try and let us know how it went.
You can use any character in the variable values with the only exception of the equal sign (=) and doublequote ("). If you use an equal sign in a variable value the variable will be truncated at this symbol and if you use a doublequote you will get this error:
root# -sh: syntax error: bad function name
Changes (since former version 2.1.1), current 2.1.2:
Now the subject of the e-mail is settable, --subject="Your very own subject" Now you can use physical paths for the --backup-point variable instead of the path using the mount point of the datastore, i.e. /vmfs/volumes/52bc5283-1db14cfc-90cc-94de80136f37/BACKUP as well as /vmfs/volumes/datastore2/BACKUP so both ways are supported.
LIMITATIONS:
We have cleared most of XSIBACKUP's limitations inherited from the original project that were: not being able to manage paths with spaces in between (*) and deleting all snapshots before doing a hot backup operation. From version 2.1.0 XSIBACKUP should be able to backup any existing ESXi 5.X box preserving all existing snapshots and no matter how it was configured.
(*)In any case, before naming your virtual machines and directory structure ask yourself if you really need them to have interstitial spaces as it will normally not give you any advantage but can give you lots of headaches at the time of working with the inners. The most advisable way of naming your VMs is with a fixed lenth code where every part of the code has its meaning, per instance WX001, W7002, LR003 standing for Windows XP #1, Windows 7 #2 and Linux Red Hat #3 respectively. This way you can programatically process the VM names in case you need it in a much more convenient way.
FACTS:
In order to allow outgoing e-mail comunicacions through the configured SMTP port XSIBackup will open the firewall by adding a new service named SMTPout and an associated outgoing rule. This is far more convenient than having to open it up manually and does not affect security as the port is opened just before sending the e-mails and is closed right after.
You have to copy xsibackup to a persistent path in your system like /vmfs/volumes/datastore1 also do make sure it has the necesary rights by issuing the following command from the same directory
chmod 0700 xsibackup
Then you can execute it by issuing
./xsibackup from the same directory
Or
/full/path/to/xsibackup
Of course if you execute it without any argument it will simply print out the help.
DESCRIPTION
© XSIBackup uses the ESXi built in command line options to create fully unattended backup solutions, this means you can create a backup schema that will for example backup all your running virtual machines every night, send you a detailed e-mail report after each backup operation and provision space once the backup disk is full by deleting the older backup folders. Only folders with the name format used by © XSIBackup will be deleted to provision space so older backups can coexist in the same disk by simply renaming the folder. © XSIBackup has built-in capabilities for e-mail submission through AUTH PLAIN authentication schema since version 1.0.3.
You can choose to carry out a "hot backup" (while the virtual machines are running) or a "cold backup" (switches off every virtual machine before copying it) by setting the option --backup-how=hot(default)|cold. If you choose "cold" © XSIBackup will issue a shutdown to the virtual machine instance and wait 30 seconds for the virtual machine to be shutdown cleanly. If after the initial 30 seconds period the VM continues to be on the program will wait 30 more seconds checking the VM state every 10 seconds after which © XSIBackup will consider the virtual machine can't be shutdown and it will be powered off. If the VM does not have © VMware Tools installed on it © XSIBackup will simply power it off.
Please note that when a VM can't be shutdown cleanly most of the times it is a program or service that keeps it from being shut down the right way. Powering off is the last recurse for © XSIBackup to be able to turn off the VM and back it up. If you see VMs that were powered off before backup in the reports please check the operating system and fix whatever is wrong (of course check that you have the last version of VMware Tools installed in every VM), most of the times nothing serious will happen but in certain circumstances you could lose data by forcing a power off.
MANUAL
INSTALL:
First of all you need to allow SSH connections to your ESXi box, you can acomplish this by using the vSphere Client. Click on the server node and go to the Configuration tab, then look for the Security Profile entry in the left side menu under the "Software" heading and click on it. You will see the firewall entries on the right. Click on the Properties link on the right and checkmark the SSH server and SSH client entries, then reboot the server.
Once you have reboot the server simply copy xsibackup file to your /vmfs/volumes/datastore1 folder by using any SSH/SCP client. You can use WinSCP at http://winscp.net/eng/download.php or any Linux/Unix command line like this (from the same directory where your downloaded xsibackup file is) linux# scp xsibackup root@[yor esxi IP]:/vmfs/volumes/datastore1
The easy way:
Cut & paste the following line in your ESXi command line and press enter. You can get this URL by clicking the right mouse button and choosing "copy link url" in many browsers.
wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/xsibackup/files/xsibackup_2.1.2.zip/download -O xsibackup.zip
This will download version 2.1.1 to the file xsibackup.zip in your local directory structure. You can then unzip it
unzip xsibackup.zip
Asign the apropiate permissions
root# chmod 0700 xsibackup
And do a quick test by executing the script without any arguments
root# ./xsibackup
If you see the help then everything went right and you can start using xsibackup.
USAGE:
Example 1 (check the process and the e-mail submission before a hot backup): xsibackup --backup-point=/vmfs/volumes/backup --backup-type=running --mail-from=[email protected] --mail-to=[email protected] --smtp-srv=smtp.33hops.com --smtp-port=25 --smtp-usr=username --smtp-pwd=password --test-mode=true
Example 2 (backup all running VMs while on, --backup-how parameter is omited as hot backup is the default): xsibackup --backup-point=/vmfs/volumes/backup --backup-type=running --mail-from=[email protected] --mail-to=[email protected] --smtp-srv=smtp.33hops.com --smtp-port=25 --smtp-usr=username --smtp-pwd=password
Example 3 (cold backup 2 given VMs): xsibackup --backup-point=/vmfs/volumes/backup --backup-how=cold --backup-type=custom --backup-vms=WINDOWSVM1,LINUXVM2 --mail-from=[email protected] --mail-to=[email protected] --smtp-srv=smtp.33hops.com:25 --smtp-port=25 --smtp-usr=username --smtp-pwd=password
Example 4 (hot backup 3 given VMs): xsibackup --backup-point=/vmfs/volumes/backup --backup-type=custom --backup-vms="WINDOWSVM1,LINUXVM2,New Virtual Machine" --mail-from=[email protected] --mail-to=[email protected] --smtp-srv=smtp.33hops.com:25 --smtp-port=25 --smtp-usr=username --smtp-pwd=password
OPTIONS:
--backup-point
Full path to the backup mount point in the local server where it will tipically be under /vmfs/volumes, i.e. /vmfs/volumes/backup. You must use the mount point of local devices when passing it to the --backup-point variable real pysical paths are not supported!!!
--backup-how (hot | cold)
Hot backup is the default method, it makes a backup while the VM is on. You can chose to make a cold backup and the VM will be cleanly shutdown befor backup and switched on right after.
--backup-type (custom | all | running)
Custom: if this methos is chosen then a list of the VMs to backup must be passed to the --backup-vms option. All: backup -all- VMS. Running: backup only running virtual machines. They will be cleanly shutdown and backed up then switched on again.
--backup-vms
List of virtual machines to backup as a colon separated list, i.e: --backup-vms=VM1,VM2,VM3, only needed if "custom" is selected as the --backup-type
--mail-from
E-mail address as from where the HTML e-mail report will be sent.
--mail-to
E-mail address to which the HTML e-mail report will be sent.
--subject
Subject of the email to send, per instance --subject="Your very own subject"
--smtp-srv
SMTP server that we will use to send the HTML e-mail report through.
--smtp-port
SMTP server port used for communication
--smtp-usr
SMTP username we will use in the plain text SMTP authentication. Please note this is the only authentication method supported by esxbackup by now.
--smtp-pwd
SMTP password used for authentication against the SMTP server.
--test-mode=true
Perform a general test without backing up the selected virtual machines. You can try your configuration and the e-mail receipt before putting it into production.
CRON SETUP
NOTICE: Soon you will be able to setup the cron job from XSIBackup (scheduled for v 2.1.0 nov-2013) but by now...
Now that you have played around with XSIBackup and tested it from the command line you will probably want to program a cron job under ESXi to get your virtual machines backed up automatically every night. To acomplish this you will need to do the following:
1 - Edit /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh, the system's startup script to get the cron service pid and to kill the process before writting anything to the crontab.
2 - Edit /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh, the system's startup script to inject the cron line you will need into the ESXi 5.X root's crontab located at /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root
3 - Start the cron service again.
To acomplish this do the folowing:
root# vi /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh
At the end of the file right before the "exit 0" statement write the following:
/bin/kill $(cat /var/run/crond.pid) # Gets the cron service pid and simply kills it.
The next line writes a tipical cron line to the crontab, in this example we execute "xsibackup" passing it some arguments to backup all running virtual machines to /vmfs/volumes/backup storing a log to /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/backup.log and adding the cron line to /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root
/bin/echo "5 0 * * * /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/xsibackup --backup-point=/vmfs/volumes/backup --backup-type=running --mail-from=[email protected] --mail-to=[email protected] --smtp-srv=smtp.yourserver.com --smtp-port=25 --smtp-usr=yourusername --smtp-pwd=yourpassword > /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/backup.log 2>&1" >> /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root
Finally we start the cron service again