How can I make a full server backup with ESXi (VMWare vSphere)?

Question

Backup

I can't find information on how to make a full server backup with ESXi (VMWare vSphere)?

The only thing I found intelligible is (as it turned out) ESXi is an alternative version of ESX, but if the latest OS is built on RedHat Linux, then in ESXi it’s not at all clear how you can make a full backup.

Answer 1

If you need a backup of the hypervisor, then it is backed up like any Linux by simple archiving.
If you need a backup of virtual machines, then you need the appropriate software (Acronis, Veeam, Symantec etc.), since virtual machine files are open for writing and cannot be copied.

Answer 2

There are certainly options, but why backup an ESXi host? Make a backup of virtual machines. Deploying an ESXi host backup in terms of time and effort will be the same as installing the hypervisor again and raising virtual machines on it.

Answer 3

Good afternoon,
SSH into the host node (root), suspend the machines, copy their files to another storage (NFS/ISCSI), as an example:
#!/usr/bin/sh
echo Backup: europa
/bin/vim-cmd vmsvc/power.suspend 48 && date && cp -R /vmfs/volumes/istorage0/europa/ /vmfs/volumes/NFS/europa/ && date && /bin/vim-cmd vmsvc/power.on 48 Good luck
!