Temp Workaround for ESXi 7?

bluebeep · February 18, 2021, 12:31pm

Hi guys,

I’ve been using Duplicacy for a couple of years and I have been thinking about introducing Vertical Backup now for a client. I noticed on the website that Vertical Backup can not backup a VM when it is running (ESXi 7). What then is the recommended way to use Vertical Backup for ESXi 7.0? What are you guys doing while we wait for a solution?

Does a script have to be run before and after Vertical Backup to shut down a VM then power it back on once the backup is complete?

If so I see I can use the esxcli to gracefully shutdown a VM but how can I ‘programmatically verify’ that it is in fact not running anymore before running Vertical Backup? If I’m on the right track here I would also assume that the script must wait for a while before verifying that the VM is actually shut down, then run Vertical Backup. I’m not sure how to accomplish this.

I’m also assuming that looping through all existing VMs would be the first step.

Is there some other recommended workaround? I’m not so good with coding and I’m wondering if you have already created a script that I can use with Vertical Backup on ESXi 7.0?

If I have a solution for this then I should be able make a recommendation for my client.

Thanks!

gchen · February 20, 2021, 4:08am

I can add --power-off and --power-on options to the backup command, just like what the restore command can take now. Would this help?

bluebeep · February 23, 2021, 2:21pm

I think it would be super useful. All we have to do then is time the power off/on off-peak I think

bluebeep · February 28, 2021, 5:59pm

How will we get notified of the new addition you make? I looked around and I don’t see any version history or change log or something like that so I can see when the change was made so I can download and test it?

simon.wright · September 20, 2021, 12:47am

When I was running a test ESXi 7 host I tried this. Yes shutting down the VM before running vertical works for the backup but I couldn’t power on the VM until the backup finishes - that would mean (for me) 10-60 minutes of downtime per VM. I could do this once in a while manually but not regularly. We have about a year before 6.7 goes EOL. I think since this seems to be a “feature” in 7 rather than a bug it will be difficult to workaround without using API.