Backup solution for ESXi 5.5 (free) for home network

jimphreak

[H]ard|Gawd
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Nov 27, 2012
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I have an ESXi 5.5 (free) host at my main home and I have VMware Workstation 11 on a PC at my second home. I'd like a good backup solution for my ESXi host that I'll be able to use to restore VM's on my VMware workstation PC.

Is this possible without installing another free ESXi host inside of VMware Workstation?

What are some of my software options?
 
Veeam free will backup the ESXi host and is brilliant but i'm not sure about restoring to workstation (with the free version anyway).
 
It's been a bit since I've used Veeam Free, but if I recall the product they have now on their website doesn't actually work with ESXi. Their old product, FastSCP I think, does work with ESXi, but it's tough to track down now.

EDIT: Their old product is Veeam Backup and FastSCP 3.0.3. I can't find it on their website anymore. Might be able to locate it somewhere on the net. I'm currently using it to backup files from my ESXi 5.5 install. Works well enough for me.
 
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You can:
- use ESXi CLI commands to create a hot memory snap via SSH (free option)
- use a snapshot capable filesystem for your datastore like ZFS (unlimited snaps, no delay)
- replicate ZFS snaps (fully restorable via included ESXi hot snaps, near realtime replication)

I have included this as a free option in napp-it but you can do manually as well.
 
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