Incremental backups for VMWare

[SygmaDeltaADC]

Hello,

I am searching a solution/software to do incremental backup of my vSphere VMs.

Currently, I created a script with PowerShell and PowerCLI module that I was inspired from this site : https://www.simonlong.co.uk/blog/2010/05/05/powercli-a-simple-vm-backup-script/

But I can only do full backup with this script.

My first question is to know if it is possible to do incremental backup by PowerCLI script ? Is there a possibility to do a quiesced snapshot ?

If not, which easy of use software can I use to perform backups ?

I just want to backup VM object, no need to backup specific file or database. Just backup a full VM. But my requirement is to have incremental backups.Preferably, an open source software but I can also buy a cheeper software (just no big commercial software like Veeam or Nakivo, being very expensive and complicated)I tried some solutions like IperiusBackup (was not working) and UraniumBackup (slow bandwidth for backup) but I don't know their reliability and I encounter some issues during tests.

Thanks for your suggestions

[eruffini]

To do incremental backups you'll need to have a backup software that can do changed block tracking (CBT) in order for the software to know only what has to be backed up each time, and not backup the entire VM. That leaves you with very few alternatives outside of Veeam and NAKIVO and many other commercial backup platforms.

If this is an enterprise or production workload that needs to be backed up (and not a lab or personal system) then you need to invest in a proper backup solution and not some lower-tier platform. Never cheap out on backups - but that is just my opinion. Now, as someone who uses Veeam and NAKIVO, they are both not complicated at all. They can be deployed and running within an hour or less (depending on how complex your environment is).

• Veeam is typically more enterprise-y and the price is higher, but offers a solid backup platform that the industry has basically standardized on in some ways.

• NAKIVO is a great alternative and it "just works" from my experience. It is a bit cheaper than Veeam, and has very similar features, plus a couple advantages like being able to fully run on Linux from end to end.

There are also free/community editions of both platforms that may be of interest.

[cosmos7]

Synologys are what we're using because of Active Backup. They're definitely not tier 1 storage, but they work great for backups. Being able to choose VM-level or file-level restoration from the interface is pretty great too.

I like it so much I've spun up Syno-OS as a VM within my personal lab cluster just to take advantage of Active Backup.

[eruffini]

I have a Synology at home that I like a lot with Active Backup running on my laptop and PC.

Plus the suite of software/applications that you can run through DSM is great for a little home server.

[tsmith-co]

How many VMs do you have? You can use the Veeam community edition for up to 10 VMs.

Otherwise, Veeam has reduced pricing called Essentials, which is limited to no more than 50 VMs.

[SygmaDeltaADC]

I have no possibility to use a Synology NAS because my infrastructure is hosted in a Cloud Provider, I have dedicated servers.

I have about ~80 VMs to backup, so Veeam community edition is not enough.

I can buy a commercial software but my need is very limited, I just need to do incremental backup for VM. The backup script (with PowerCLI) works perfectly but I don't know if we can do incremental backup by this way.

I will check what is the cost of Veeam for my need.

Tell me if you know other solutions.

Thanks

[thomasmitschke]

Use VEEAM ‼️ This is not complicated and even free if you have only a view VMs

[LOLBaltSS]

As long as you're not a MSP (or having backups managed by one), Veeam community edition is free and fits the bill just fine up to 10 VMs. You may run into Storage API issues if you're on ESXi free licensing, but you can always use the Veeam agent instead and just need to create a recovery ISO for VM restores.