Schedule Snapshots of ESXi5 VM's

[Stuart_C]

I'm new to the virtualisastion setup but I've managed to get my installation of ESXi 5 running, some servers installed and in general it all looks OK.
However I am wondering how I go about backing up the VM's as a whole (i.e. in case of serious hardware failure)
As I've only got a single Virtualised server at the minute I'm not using vCentre. But what I want to be able to do is schedule a snapshot of the PC then copy the files onto a NAS so if there is a major issue I can get the machines back much quicker.

Is there an easy way to accomplish this?

[3s-gtech]

I use GhettoVCB for this, this is a script which runs from my DC using Task Scheduler. It runs a script on the host which backs up the named VMs to a NFS attached NAS. Took a little fiddling to install, but working okay now. The instructions provided are pretty good.

[FN-GM]

This method of backup is not always suitable. It should never be done on a DC it will cause lots of problems. Also on a file server it won't be good as you cannot restore invidual files easily.

With some virtual machines it's best to treat the backups aside the server is physical.

[3s-gtech]

Agreed - my DC which runs the script is just the script host, and is physical. I have made a list VMs on the host which it'll backup, the DC that's on there is not included.