easyVCB Installation

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easyVCB

Introduction

Installation

Usage

Support

Prerequisites

easyVCB requires the VMWare VI Perl SDK and VMWare Consolidated Backup to function correctly. easyVCB has been tested with VI Perl SDK 1.5 and Consolidated Backup 1.1/1.5 and ESX server 3.5Ux and Virtual Center server 2.5Ux. It also works (with some limitations) with ESX 3.0.x and VC 2.0.x.

The same holds true for newer VI Perl SDK versions. With VI Perl SDK Version 1.6 VMware changed the API (of course not backwards compatible) in one of their utility functions and I have not yet had the time to adapt easyVCB to this change (which is trivial, but all my Open Source development time has to be customer sponsored). Please contact me if you cannot use VI Perl SDK 1.5 for whatever reason (The new pass-through authentication works of course also with easyVCB on VI Perl SDK Version 1.6) and want me to release an update.

Besides the changed API and the pass-through authentication there is nothing new in VI Perl SDK Version 1.6 (regarding easyVCB).

Installation

The SDK and VCB should be installed into their default locations, please beware of non-english Windows versions and the c:\program files\... localization.

easyvcb comes with all requires program files and libraries included and can be installed anywhere on the system, I recommend to install easyvcb into c:\program files\vmware\easyvcb to keep things together.

Upgrade & Migration

Upgrading from a previous version usually only entail replacing the easyvcb directory with the most recent version and adapting the easyvcb.conf file with your settings.

Upgrade to 1.3

With version 1.2 and 1.3 the directory layout of the backup changed. Therefore you must move the backup content manually to the new format. This is best done the following way:

Erase the oldest backup from each VM subdirectory
Run easyvcb once for all VMs, it will create a new backup in the new directory structure
Move the old backups from the old VM subdirectories to the new VM subdirectories (they have the full datacenter path as part of the directory name) and remove the old VM subdirectory

Failing to follow this migration procedure will probably make your next backup job fail because it will not be able to remove any old backups.

Test

First you should test the diskfree.pl script by calling it with

perl diskfree.pl c:\temp

It will tell you the free disk space in c:\temp as easyVCB sees it.

The second test is to edit the configuration file easyvcb.conf and set the logon credentials for your Virtual Center server (or ESX server). Then you can list the VM in your environment with

perl easyvcb-find.pl

You should get a list of all VM in your data center. This also proves that you installed the VI Perl SDK correctly.

Now you are ready to try a backup of one (preferrably small) VM by supplying the full data center path (as listed by easyvcb-find.pl) as a command line parameter to easyvcb.pl.

Download & Install easyVCB

Download the current easyVCB easyVCB-1.4.zip archive and unpack it under c:\program files\vmware, it will create the easyvcb directory that contains all easyvcb files.

Test easyVCB DLL compatibility by calling the diskfree.pl script. It should give you the disk free space of c:\temp.

You must configure easyVCB by editing the easyVCB.conf file before you will be able to use easyVCB for anything useful. See the usage information for further details.

Other (historic and development) easyVCB versions:
easyVCB-1.3.zip
easyvcb-1.0.zip
easyvcb-1.2.zip

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last modified 2008-10-06 08:06:27

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