VMware vSphere Free Backup Solution for VM Protection

Why choose Free Backup for VMware?

Many small and medium-sized businesses run their business-critical servers on VMware vSphere environments for better resource utilization, easier manageability, minimal downtime, and cost savings. So, for them, VMware vSphere backup is important, but generally, backup solutions are expensive. Though VMware has inbuilt snapshot functionality for the VMs, it is neither a complete nor a consistent method of backing up the business-critical virtual machines with restore points spanning months or years.

In addition to VMware snapshots, is there any free vSphere backup solution?

Available vSphere free backup solutions

As we said, VM snapshots and backups cannot replace each other since snapshots are not independent and will affect your VM performance in the long-term. For businesses or organizations that want long-term data protection, it is better to consider the following backup solutions:

✽ Manually copy VM disk files: A VM is essentially a set of files. The virtual disk files can be directly opened by the hypervisor.

✽ Export VM to OVF/OVA: Open Virtualization Format (OVF) is a file format that supports the exchange of virtual appliances across products and platforms. You can achieve faster downloads this way, but you still need to export VM from ESXi one by one.

✽ Agent-based VM backup: You can perform file-based backup by using Windows Server Backup or Backup and Restore that come with Windows guest operating systems. However it cannot back up the host and guest configurations, and performing file-based backup on multiple VMs one by one can be laborious.

✽ Agentless free backup software: This is the most reliable way to backup VMs today. You can create independent and complete backups of multiple VMs with simple steps.

AOMEI Cyber Backup offers free enterprise backup software that delivers powerful, flexible, and agile data protection for VMware virtual machines at zero cost.

Best practice for vSphere backup freeware

Failure of a critical VM or group of VMs can lead to service interruption or serious financial loss. Organizations should have a consistent VM backup and restore solution. Organizations need to make sure backups are free of errors, don’t take too long, and can be efficiently restored when a failure occurs. In addition, the expensive backup costs may be a burden to SMBs, so here I present a vSphere backup free solution to you.

AOMEI Cyber Backup offers a reliable and free ESXi backup for virtual machines. It offers a centralized console to create backup tasks that cover multiple VMs, restore entire VMs, and automate VM protection.

If you use free VMware ESXi, your options may have been limited by not supporting vStorage APIs. Don't worry, AOMEI Cyber Backup supports both paid and free ESXi.

Whether you'd like to save the backups for protection or VM migration, this will doubtlessly reduce business downtime and operating error. It supports VMware ESXi (6.0 and above) & Hyper-V (2012 and later) while offering the following benefits:

Support Free ESXi: AOMEI Cyber Backup supports both paid and free versions of VMware ESXi.
Agentless Backup: Create image-based backup of multiple VMs without installing Agent on each VM.
Automatic Backup: Schedule the VMware backups to run the tasks automatically with email notification.
Restore VM From Any Point: Restore a whole VM from any backed-up point.

Please hit the button below to download and use the AOMEI Cyber Backup free edition with no time limit:

*You can choose to install this VM backup software on either Windows or Linux system.

✍ If you want to create a new VM from the backup (in the same or new location), please upgrade to enjoy the out-of-place recovery function.

Easier steps to backup multiple ESXi VMs for free

1. Bind Devices: Access to AOMEI Cyber Backup web client, navigate to Source Device > VMware > + Add VMware Device. You can enter vCenter or Standalone ESXi host information to add virtual machines  > click Confirm.

Note: This step is only needed when you bind the host for the first time, you do not need to repeat after successful binding.

2. Create Backup Tasks: Navigate to Backup Task > + Create New Task, and provide Task Name Backup Type Device Target, and Schedule as needed.

• Device: cover multiple VMs on the host in one backup task.
• Target: you can select to back up to a local path, or a network path. Used paths will be saved in Favorite Storage for handy selection.
• Schedule: you can choose to perform full, differential, or incremental backup, and automate execution daily, weekly, or monthly according to the frequency you specified.

3. Start Backup: Click Start Backup to select to Add the schedule and start backup now, or Add the schedule only.

Created backup tasks will be listed separately for further log checking, task changing, or restoring.

While the Free Edition covers most of VM backup needs, you can also upgrade to enjoy:

▶ Batch VM Backup: batch backup large numbers of VMs managed by vCenter Server or standalone ESXi hosts.
▶ Backup cleanup: Configure a retention policy to auto delete old backup files and save storage space.
▶ Restore to new location: Create a new VM in the same or another datastore/host directly from the backup, saving the trouble of re-configuring the new VM.

Summary

An effective vSphere backup can protect your virtual machines in the production environment in case of disaster. This article introduces vSphere backup free solution. AOMEI Cyber Backup provides a complete backup of your virtual machines at no additional cost. Besides, you can restore an entire VM from any backup version with simple clicks.