Easy and Efficient VMware vSphere Essentials Backup Software

VMware vSphere Essentials backup overview

VMware vSphere is the industry-leading enterprise virtualization platform. It empowers users to virtualize scale-up and scale-out applications with confidence, redefines availability, and simplifies the virtual data center. With VMware announced its newest version of vSphere, vSphere 8, on August 30, 2022, it could be a good time for you to get started or upgrade your vSphere environment.

VMware ESXi and vCenter Server are 2 key components of vSphere suite. You are free to create virtual machines on ESXi host, and use vCenter Server to centrally manage your multiple ESXi hosts and VMs. However, after VMware Data Protection is announced the end of availability starting from vSphere 6.5, vSphere will no longer include official backup software, and the task of data protection is handed back to the third-party ecosystem.

So, have you chosen the right VMware license and data protection software? In this article, I will briefly introduce VMware vSphere Essentials Kit and a convenient VMware vSphere Essentials Kit backup software.

VMware vSphere Essentials Kit overview

VMware offers different types of VMware licenses for different requirements. If you are a small business that just get started with virtualization, VMware vSphere Essentials Kit and vSphere Essentials Plus Kit may be the best choice for you. Both of them are specially designed for virtualization up to 3 physical servers with centralized management using VMware vCenter Server for Essentials.

The vSphere Essentials Kit licenses are perpetual and do not have an end date. The support term includes updates and new releases of the selected product during the time frame selected.

The kit is good to start with if you are new to virtualization and don’t need much automatic availability. However, it doesn’t include a backup product for your virtual machines. You still need an effective software to protect your VM data. In this regard, VMware vSphere Essentials Kit and third-party backup software can be considered the most affordable way to properly get into virtualization.

An efficient VMware vSphere Essentials Backup software

With vSphere 6.5 become the last release that includes vSphere Data Protection, VMware has decided to exit the data protection market and focus its investments on VMware vSphere Storage APIs.

If you still rely on VDP, you will need to migrate your backup policies to other third-party software. If you still haven’t chosen one, here I introduce you an easy-to-use VMware backup software AOMEI Cyber Backup. It enables you to backup multiple VMs in VMware vSphere in 3 simple steps.

If you also used free VMware ESXi, you may be troubled by VM backup on free ESXi due to its limitation of not supporting vStorage APIs. Luckily, AOMEI Cyber Backup supports both paid and free versions of VMware ESXi.

✦ Agentless Backup: create complete and independent image-level backup for VMware ESXi and Hyper-V VMs.
✦ Support Free ESXi: support both paid and free versions of VMware ESXi.
✦ Flexible vSphere Backup: batch backup numerous VMs managed by vCenter Server, or multiple VMs on a standalone ESXi host.
✦ Multiple Storage Destinations: backup to local drive, or network destinations like Windows share or NAS.
✦ Automated Execution: create backup schedules to automate backups daily, weekly, monthly.
✦ Email Notification: send email notification when the task is completed or abnormal.
✦ Role Assignment: allows one administrator to create sub-accounts with limited privileges.

AOMEI Cyber Backup supports VMware vSphere/ESXi 6.0 and later versions. And simplifies the process of backing up VMs into 3 simple steps. Next, I will show you how to backup create vSphere backup via AOMEI Cyber Backup. You can click the following button to download the free trial.

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

3 steps to perform VMware vSphere Essentials backup

1. Bind Devices: Access to AOMEI Cyber Backup web client, navigate to Source Device > VMware > + Add VMware Device to Add vCenter or Standalone ESXi. And then click … > Bind Device.

2. Create Backup Task: Navigate to Backup Task > + Create New Task, select the Device Type as VMware ESXi Backup, then you can configure the Task Name, Device, Target, Schedule, and Backup Cleanup.

• Device: you can select multiple VMs from added vCenter Server or standalone ESXi host.
• Target: select to back up to a local path, or to a network path.
• Schedule: choose to perform full, differential or incremental backup, and automate execution according to the frequency you specified.
• Backup cleanup: configure a retention policy to auto delete old backup files and save storage space.

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

Created backup tasks will be listed and monitored separately, for restoring, progress checking and schedule setting.

When you want to restore from a backup, you can choose to Restore to original location or Restore to new location. The second option enables you to create a new VM in the same or another datastore/host directly from the backup, saves the trouble of re-configuring the new VM.

Summary

VMware vSphere is VMware’s virtualization platform and is a hypervisor and management suite marketed to IT infrastructure providers. If you are new to virtualization and do not have a large scale, a combination of VMware vSphere Essentials Kit and a professional backup software is probably the most affordable way to get started with VMware virtualization.

In this article, I briefly introduced the VMware vSphere Essentials kit, and a convenient software for performing VMware vSphere Essentials backup. You can try AOMEI Cyber Backup, an efficient vSphere backup solution that enables you to quickly create a complete backup task that covers multiple VMs.