Need a backup for Home VMs

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farscapesg1

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Aug 4, 2004
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So, for the last couple years I've been using NFR licenses for Veeam for my home lab. Looks like they have changed the NFR license to 180 days now so I'm looking for a replacement. It was nice having the automatic schedule, but since it is a home setup, that isn't exactly required as long as it is pretty simple to just click a button or two and make a backup.

I've only got 5 VMs that "need" to backup (Server 2012 Essentials, PVR, vCenter, Untangle, and a usenet/bittorrent box). There are a couple others that would be nice but if I had to rebuild them after a data loss it wouldn't be that big of a deal. One of the deal breakers is I need the agent to run on a Windows box (my Essentials VM) and be able to backup to a disk on that VM (DroboPro connected via iSCSi and also used as backup location for regular files) or at least save to a windows network share.

I think Veeam Backup Free might work for me, but I've got to try it out. Unitrends seems to have a free option if you have 4 or less VMs, but also requires it's own CentOS VM and I don't know if that will backup to a Windows share. Anyone got a suggestion?

Cliffnote version
- need VMWare backup recommendation at home that will back up to a DroboPro attached to a Windows VM and can handle 5+ VMs for free since Veeam NFR licenses are 180 days now. Would like automated but not absolutely required.
 
Hmm.. ghettovcb and xsibeckup both look like command line. Not a big deal, but after using Veeam for a couple years I'm lazy ;)

Trilead VM Explorer looks like it might work for, but the free version doesn't have appear to have scheduling tasks, so I'm not sure what benefits it has over the Veeam Backup Free (Veeamzip).

Got the free version of Veeam installed and it seems to work for what I need. Doesn't do incrementals (doesn't look llike Trilead does either), but really a manual full once a week should do for my needs. Ran in to one hiccup backing up my 2012 Essentials server, but I fixed that by disabling VSS in the VMWare Tools for that client.

So I guess unless something comes up that would give me incrementals and a gui for free (yeah.. probably a pipe dream) I'll probably make due with the free version of Veeam.
 
Anyone see a benefit to using something sure as Veaam to backup when I can just use the client backup feature in Server 2012? It doesn't take much to set up another VM if something were to go bad and just restore from the backups. Veaam free doesn't look to be automated like it is and can't backup live VMs from what I can see.
 
Sorry for hijacking this thread but I am also looking for something similar.
I was about to use the Veeam Free seeing all positive feedback on this software, but I'm not entirely sure it's "free" as you need to put a corporate email adress to create a user and download it.

For instance Gmail, Hotmail, Outlook email adresses cannot be used. Hence I cannot download it (not allowed to use corporate email for personal purposes).
 
Veeam Free is indeed free (if you have the right email address I guess). I believe it does backup live VMs...I think I tried it once. But yeah, there's no scheduling.
 
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