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Home modified by Daniel J. García Fidalgo

Daniel J. García Fidalgo — Sat, 27 Oct 2018 15:04:10 -0000

--- v20
+++ v21
@@ -1,35 +1,35 @@
-We did broaden the number of characters you can use in variable values and now you can use anything in the ASCII set except double quote (") and equal sign (=). Please use the discussion section to leave your issues or comments to help others.
+XSIBackup is a program that runs in the ESXi OS shell and allows to backup Virtual Machines and the VMWare ESXi configuration. It is highly flexible and at the same time, due to its command line nature, it's easy to integrate with wider scope systems, thus it's not only a program in the classical meaning of the word, but can also be considered a framework up to some degree.

-IMPORTANT:
+XSIBackup has been designed with the needs of an ESXi Sys Admin in mind. It is flexible, resilient, has almost no footprint and is one of the fastest tools available to backup VMWare Environments. It is compounded by scripts that hold the main high level logic and which you are allowed to tweak to your needs, plus a set of binaries that are meant to do the heavy work at the time to copy hundreds or thousands of gigabytes. XSIBackup is so lightweight, that will backup your VMs while your users are connected to your resources and they will notice nothing.

-Please try to use a different hard disk for backups (local or NFS). Doing a backup in the same disk where your VMs are is not a good idea: if you loose the disk you loose everything, transfer speed will be toooo sloooow and you will be punishing your HD device and reducing its life increasing the risk to loose data.
+XSIBackup functioning is simple, it adheres to common Linux command line naming conventions and usage. You simply call it from the command line with a set of arguments as described in the Man Page here: https://33hops.com/xsibackup-help-man-page.html

-Do not forget the basic configuration. xsibackup is a bash script so make sure it has de necesary rights by issuing the following command from the same directory
+Those arguments, as you may already imagine, are the fundamental pieces of information that allow to identify the Virtual Machines to copy, where to copy them and how to do that work, namely: 

-chmod 0700 xibackup
+1/ The place where to copy them **--backup-point**, which can be a path in the local server or an **IP:port:/path** on a remote server.
+2/ The backup program to use --backup-prog. Depending on what your goals are, you may choose among **Vmkfstools**, [XSITools](http://https://33hops.com/xsitools-vmfs-deduplication.html), [OneDiff](http://https://33hops.com/xsibackup-pro-onediff.html), **XSIDiff** or **Borg**.
+3/ Other arguments will allow you to choose the Virtual Machines to backup, whether to quiesce the guest OS or not, etc...

-Then you can execute it by issuing
+XSIBackup is installed to a folder in your ESXi server** /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/xsi-dir** by default. It will also add an entry in your **/etc/rc.local.d/local.sh** file if you install the crontab.

-./xsibackup from the same directory
+It is constitued by the main **xsibackup** file, which holds most of the higher level logic, an **src** folder that contains additional modules and functions, the bin folders, which contains the binaries that will power the data transfer operations, a conf folder containing the configuration files, such as xsiopts (contains global variables), smtpsrvs (contains the smtp server information), the crontabs and the **var** folder which contains the logs.

-Or
+Installing XSIBackup is as simple as copying or extracting the contains of the .zip package to an install dir and setting permissions on the **xsibackup** file itself as well as the **src** and **bin** folders.

-/full/path/to/xsibackup
+`chmod -R 0700 xsibackup src bin`

-Of course if you execute it without any argument it will simply print out the help.
+You can optionally install the crontab by running

-DESCRIPTION
+./xsibackup --install-cron

-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.
+Uninstalling XSIBackup is very simple, just remove the installation folder and any eventual lines in **/etc/rc.local.d/local.sh** and/or the root crontab /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root. The below command will uninstall XSIBackup in one action.

-Features:
-- Command line tool with real time output. Self contained, no dependencies, runs in the hypervisor.
-- Hot backups, no downtime.
-- Unattended backups of ESXi servers.
-- Automatic provisioning of space by deleting the older folders.
-- Detailed report of all the backup process per virtual machine (speed, shutdown, boot, space provisioning, times, etc...)
-- Cron programmable.
-- Detailed log of every backup session.
+rm -rf "/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/xsi-dir"; \
+chmod 0700 /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root; \ 
+sed -i '/-dir\/jobs/d' /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root; \
+sed -i '/cron-init/d' /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh

-[[members limit=20]]
-[[download_button]]
+XSIBackup is offered as two editions:
+
+A/ [XSIBackup-Free](http://https://33hops.com/xsibackup-vmware-esxi-backup.html): which is the right choice if you just want to backup your home lab VMs or you have limited needs.
+B/ [XSIBACKUP-PRO](http://https://33hops.com/xsibackup-pro-vmware-esxi-backup.html): which is an advanced version of the software that features checksum certification, deduplicated and differential backups to other ESXi and Linux servers, a Graphical User Interface, enterprise licenseing, e-mail support, etc...

Home modified by Daniel J. García Fidalgo

Daniel J. García Fidalgo — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 14:49:51 -0000

--- v19
+++ v20
@@ -2,14 +2,7 @@

 IMPORTANT:

-As per version 2.0.0 backups could only be performed to the root of the backup device on paths like this
-
-/vmfs/volumes/backup1
-/vmfs/volumes/backup2
-...
-
-Since version 2.0.1 backups can be placed on subfolders of the backup device.
-Since version 2.0.2 you can backup .vmdk disks placed on different datastores.
+Please try to use a different hard disk for backups (local or NFS). Doing a backup in the same disk where your VMs are is not a good idea: if you loose the disk you loose everything, transfer speed will be toooo sloooow and you will be punishing your HD device and reducing its life increasing the risk to loose data.

 Do not forget the basic configuration. xsibackup is a bash script so make sure it has de necesary rights by issuing the following command from the same directory

Home modified by Daniel J. García Fidalgo

Daniel J. García Fidalgo — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 14:45:47 -0000

--- v18
+++ v19
@@ -1,6 +1,4 @@
-KNOWN BUGS:
-
-Well, using some characters as variable values (that includes --smtp-usr & --smtp-pwd) might cause XSIBACKUP to fail. We asume you are not using characters like "·"!·"%$(&/(=" in your virtual machine names (mainly becouse VMWare has naming conventions) but you might be using them in your smtp username or password. To avoid variable handling issues we will filter their values to only allow a restringed set of characters, mainly letters, numbers and maybe a few more. Until we release a newer version try to fall back to a more or less regular set of characters when dealing with any variable value in XSIBACKUP, by now use an esay & error aproach if you get any error ;-)
+We did broaden the number of characters you can use in variable values and now you can use anything in the ASCII set except double quote (") and equal sign (=). Please use the discussion section to leave your issues or comments to help others.

 IMPORTANT:

Home modified by Daniel J. García Fidalgo

Daniel J. García Fidalgo — Sat, 18 Jan 2014 19:46:18 -0000

--- v17
+++ v18
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 KNOWN BUGS:

-Well, using some characters as variable values (that includes --smtp-usr & --smtp-pwd) might cause XSIBACKUP to fail. We asume you are not using characters like "·"!·"%$(&/(=" in your virtual machine names (mainly becouse VMWare has naming conventions) but you might be using them in your smtp username or password. To avoid variable handling issues we will filter their values to only allow a restringed set of characters, mainly US ASCII and maybe a few more. Until we release a newer version try to fall back to a more or less regular set of characters when dealing with any variable value in XSIBACKUP, by now use an esay & error aproach if you get any error ;-)
+Well, using some characters as variable values (that includes --smtp-usr & --smtp-pwd) might cause XSIBACKUP to fail. We asume you are not using characters like "·"!·"%$(&/(=" in your virtual machine names (mainly becouse VMWare has naming conventions) but you might be using them in your smtp username or password. To avoid variable handling issues we will filter their values to only allow a restringed set of characters, mainly letters, numbers and maybe a few more. Until we release a newer version try to fall back to a more or less regular set of characters when dealing with any variable value in XSIBACKUP, by now use an esay & error aproach if you get any error ;-)

 IMPORTANT:

Home modified by Daniel J. García Fidalgo

Daniel J. García Fidalgo — Sat, 18 Jan 2014 19:44:59 -0000

--- v16
+++ v17
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 KNOWN BUGS:

-Well, using some characters as variable values (that includes --smtp-usr & --smtp-pwd) might cause XSIBACKUP to fail. We asume you are not using characters like "·"!·"%$(&/(=" in your virtual machine names (mainly becouse VMWare has naming conventions) but you might be using them in your smtp username or password. To avoid variable handling issues we will filter their values to only allow a restringed set of characters, mainly US ASCII and maybe a few more. Until we release a newer version try to fall back to a more or less regular set of characters when dealing with any variable value in XSIBACKUP, by now use an esay & error aproach if you get any error.
+Well, using some characters as variable values (that includes --smtp-usr & --smtp-pwd) might cause XSIBACKUP to fail. We asume you are not using characters like "·"!·"%$(&/(=" in your virtual machine names (mainly becouse VMWare has naming conventions) but you might be using them in your smtp username or password. To avoid variable handling issues we will filter their values to only allow a restringed set of characters, mainly US ASCII and maybe a few more. Until we release a newer version try to fall back to a more or less regular set of characters when dealing with any variable value in XSIBACKUP, by now use an esay & error aproach if you get any error ;-)

 IMPORTANT:

Home modified by Daniel J. García Fidalgo

Daniel J. García Fidalgo — Sat, 18 Jan 2014 19:44:42 -0000

--- v15
+++ v16
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 KNOWN BUGS:

-Well, using some characters as variable values (that includes --smtp-usr & --smtp-pwd) might cause XSIBACKUP to fail. We asume you are not using characters like "·"!·"%$(&/(=" in your virtual machine names (mainly becouse VMWare has naming conventions) but you might be using them in your smtp username or password. To avoid variable handling issues we will filter their values to only allow a restringed set of characters, mainly US ASCII and maybe a few more. Until we release a newer version try to fall back to a more or less regular set of characters when dealing with any variable value in XSIBACKUP.
+Well, using some characters as variable values (that includes --smtp-usr & --smtp-pwd) might cause XSIBACKUP to fail. We asume you are not using characters like "·"!·"%$(&/(=" in your virtual machine names (mainly becouse VMWare has naming conventions) but you might be using them in your smtp username or password. To avoid variable handling issues we will filter their values to only allow a restringed set of characters, mainly US ASCII and maybe a few more. Until we release a newer version try to fall back to a more or less regular set of characters when dealing with any variable value in XSIBACKUP, by now use an esay & error aproach if you get any error.

 IMPORTANT:

Home modified by Daniel J. García Fidalgo

Daniel J. García Fidalgo — Sat, 18 Jan 2014 19:43:06 -0000

--- v14
+++ v15
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 KNOWN BUGS:

-There apears to be a bug when encoding some characters in the SMTP username & password. There isn't any problem with regular characters so just as long as you use letters, numbers and common characters there shouldn't be any problem. It looks like an scaping issue. We will keep you informed and release a fix as soon as we can.
+Well, using some characters as variable values (that includes --smtp-usr & --smtp-pwd) might cause XSIBACKUP to fail. We asume you are not using characters like "·"!·"%$(&/(=" in your virtual machine names (mainly becouse VMWare has naming conventions) but you might be using them in your smtp username or password. To avoid variable handling issues we will filter their values to only allow a restringed set of characters, mainly US ASCII and maybe a few more. Until we release a newer version try to fall back to a more or less regular set of characters when dealing with any variable value in XSIBACKUP.

 IMPORTANT:

Home modified by Daniel J. García Fidalgo

Daniel J. García Fidalgo — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 12:53:11 -0000

--- v13
+++ v14
@@ -1,3 +1,7 @@
+KNOWN BUGS:
+
+There apears to be a bug when encoding some characters in the SMTP username & password. There isn't any problem with regular characters so just as long as you use letters, numbers and common characters there shouldn't be any problem. It looks like an scaping issue. We will keep you informed and release a fix as soon as we can.
+
 IMPORTANT:

 As per version 2.0.0 backups could only be performed to the root of the backup device on paths like this

Home modified by Daniel J. García Fidalgo

Daniel J. García Fidalgo — Fri, 03 Jan 2014 16:58:17 -0000

--- v12
+++ v13
@@ -7,9 +7,7 @@
 ...

 Since version 2.0.1 backups can be placed on subfolders of the backup device.
-
-
-You can have as many backup devices as you want but you cannot backup to subfolders like /vmfs/volumes/datastore2/backup. We asume backup devices should be dedicated and thus this should not be any problem. We might consider allowing backup to subfolders in future versions.
+Since version 2.0.2 you can backup .vmdk disks placed on different datastores.

 Do not forget the basic configuration. xsibackup is a bash script so make sure it has de necesary rights by issuing the following command from the same directory

Home modified by Daniel J. García Fidalgo

Daniel J. García Fidalgo — Sun, 29 Dec 2013 18:00:27 -0000

--- v11
+++ v12
@@ -1,10 +1,13 @@
 IMPORTANT:

-As per version 2.0.0 backups can only be performed to the root of the backup device on paths like this
+As per version 2.0.0 backups could only be performed to the root of the backup device on paths like this

 /vmfs/volumes/backup1
 /vmfs/volumes/backup2
 ...
+
+Since version 2.0.1 backups can be placed on subfolders of the backup device.
+

 You can have as many backup devices as you want but you cannot backup to subfolders like /vmfs/volumes/datastore2/backup. We asume backup devices should be dedicated and thus this should not be any problem. We might consider allowing backup to subfolders in future versions.