The other weekend I managed to get some spare time to do another update to my ESXi 5.0 / 5.1 Host Backup & Restore GUI utility, this time it has been updated to version 1.3. I didn’t post up the changes as it was done by special request from one of my blog readers (thanks Flavio!) However, after receiving more comments with a few others having a similiar issue to what Flavio had, I thought I should definitely post the updated version here, which should hopefully solve the issues some people are seeing.
The changes are based on feedback received in the comments I have received about the utility relating to exceptions received when users in some circumstances try to backup their host configurations. Specifically the exception message “Exception caught: Get-VMHost VMHost with name ‘xxx’ was not found using the specified filter(s).”
A quick post today to just mention that I have updated my ESXi 5.0 / 5.1 Host Backup & Restore GUI utility to version 1.2.
There are a couple of improvements in 1.2 based on feedback received in the comments I have received about the utility. The main improvement introduces a function in the script which backs the GUI to check that ESX hosts are valid before attempting to backup or restore these. You can check the utility out over on it’s page here.
Updates (29-12-2012) – version 1.2:
Added ESX/ESXi host validation into utility – will now test that the host is valid and either connected or in maintenance mode before attempting backup or restore (See the script’s new “Check-VMHost” function for those interested)
This little host backup utility I created back in February 2012 has been receiving quite a bit of attention, and has already managed to get over 2000 downloads.
Someone recently asked the other day if it was possible to restore a configuration file to a new host (i.e. new hardware). With version 1.0 of my utility, this was not possible due to mismatches that the PowerCLI cmdlet finds (i.e. MAC addresses on NICs etc… on the new hardware when compared to the existing backup). However, the Set-VMHostFirmware cmdlet allows the use of a -Force paramter, so I set about updating the utility to allow for this.
Here is a quick list of changes in version 1.1
Allows restore to new hardware (tick the “Force restore to new hardware” checkbox). Please note that I have only very briefly tested this on virtualised ESXi hosts – it works, but I am not sure how networking configurations are applied to NICs and differing physical NIC orders – so it is best to test this thoroughly in a dev/test environment before using anywhere else!
Tested against single ESXi hosts as opposed to connecting to vCenter first.
Updated labels to neaten up a bit – connection box now shows that you can connect to single hosts or vCenter
This is a little bit of a fun project I have been working on in bits of spare time I find. It is all written in PowerCLI 5.0 / 5.1 / PowerShell and the GUI was laid out using Primal Forms Community Edition.
Updates (17-02-2013) – version 1.3:
Hosts are retrieved using a new method (for both backup and restore options)
Updates (29-12-2012) – version 1.2:
Added ESX/ESXi host validation into utility – will now test that the host is valid and either connected or in maintenance mode before attempting backup or restore (See the script’s new “Check-VMHost” function for those interested)
Minor UI improvements
Updates (29-10-2012) – version 1.1:
This utility has been tested on ESXi 5.1 Hosts and confirmed to be able to successfully create a backup archive file of these.
Be sure your DNS is working correctly on the system you run the Backup utility on – it relies on DNS to find your ESXi hosts as they are named in the dropdown when you select the host to backup. (See comments for troubleshooting)
Restore to new hardware (force restore) option added
Fixed labels and connection box label description
What it is essentially, is a GUI that allows you to Backup ESXi 5.0 or ESXi 5.1 hosts to a destination of your choice on a local drive. It also allows you to restore ESXi Host configuration bundle backups taken, to other Hosts. I had other plans to integrate cloud storage options in (Amazon S3) as a backup target, but I thought that this doesn’t really offer anything valuable and I would just keep it relatively simple for now – therefore I have disabled this functionality. The PowerCLI script is fairly long – and I know there are plenty improvements I could make to better it and shorten the code, but for now it does the job. I have added various catches for exceptions / errors so you should get visual feedback if you have entered an invalid path, or username for example.
Anyway, hopefully this proves useful to some! As always, take care using the backup / restore functionality of this utility. The restore functionality works by first putting the ESXi host into Maintenance mode (if it isn’t already in this mode) and then applying a backup bundle to the host (Restore). The Host will reboot immediately following this. The Backup and Restore is implemented using Get-VMHostFirmware and Set-VMHostFirmware cmdlets so you can read the help descriptions for an idea on how exactly these work. The Host Backup Bundles are stored in a path of your choice and when restoring from a path the cmdlet works by looking for a bundle filename that matches the name of your ESXi host selected to restore to. Note that the file browser module I have implemented here (used to select paths) is a modification of the work done by Ravikanth Chaganti on his PowerShell Help Browser GUI. I simply adapted his code to list the contents of local drives in a tree view instead of PowerShell Help cmdlets. The only limitation here is that I have not implemented code to browse further than one level into the root of each drive. If you can provide this modification yourself, please feel free to contribute in the comments! I have just not spent the extra time to do this myself yet.
Here are a couple of quick screenshots of the Utility / GUI:
