A simple backup mechanism for ESX servers

If you are responsible for a small virtual environment running VMware  you will have no doubt looked at the various backup options – paid and unpaid.  Each has their own merits and some fit better for the small vmware infrastructures with only a few esx or esxi servers. I usually try to advise clients to balance the ease of use against the cost for licensing of backup solutions bearing in mind that most will only work with paid for versions of esx or esxi.

Given the relatively low cost of entry to VMware licensing through Essentials or if you can stretch to it Essentials plus – you can put together a simple but effective vmware cluster with  three servers and a software san – but how do you get simple but effective backup strategies going.

In a recent project I had a chance to propose a slightly different solution to backups rather than the normal choice from the leading providers of vmware backup software that I have encountered in the last few years. Trilead VM Explorer provides a means to manage your virtual hosts and create scheduled full and incremental backups. You can get it from here.

PS

There is a free version which supports up to 5 licensed hosts here

Its worth taking the trial version for a spin –  bear in mind its one license for your whole infrastructure not each host !!