Manual ESXi quiescence

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Robert Smith

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May 4, 2014
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Hi,

I use ESXi 5.5 (Free) and FreeNAS, but I have yet to bring the two together.

Besides using FreeNAS over iSCSI as simple storage for the ESXi; I am investigating the possibility of automatic ZFS replication to an off-site FreeNAS server for backup purposes.

Obviously, we cannot simply schedule ZFS snapshots without taking into account the state of the iSCSI initiators. One way to insure the data is safe is by simply shutting down the ESXi along with all its virtual machines (assuming all VMs have VMware tools installed).

Thus, the process, controlled by a scheduled script, would look like this:

· Initiate the ESXi shut down. This would cause orderly shut-down of the VMware tools enabled virtual machines, and shut down the ESXi server.

· Verify that the iSCSI initiators have disconnected.

· Create a ZFS snapshot.

· Verify the snapshot creation has finalized.

· Power on the ESXi server via Wake-on-Lan.

· Trigger the off-site replication of the ZFS snapshot created two steps above.​

Have anyone done something like this? Please critique my idea.


Thank you.


P.S. Please note, I am using a free version of ESXi, as such things like vMotion, or anything requiring ESXi storage API, would not work.
 

cyberjock

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Mar 25, 2012
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Well, you're options are somewhat limited (yay for requiring money for easy addon-features).

From my perspective your option is quite literally the safest. It sucks because there's no 100% that you wouldn't have a problem in the future. There's a lot of little machinations going on to make all of that work.

The "second" best option is to do a snapshot of the VMs, then do a ZFS snapshot of the iSCSI target, then delete the VM snapshots. This would suck and I'm not sure it's any better for "uptime" as the VMs will perform like a wet dog while doing theVM snapshot creation and deletion. Obviously there's risk of some mid-transaction thing going horribly wrong as the VM is still "up" the whole time, but that would be a decision that you'd have to make.

Ultimately though, your 2 best options are exactly what you listed above or buy ESXi so you could have those API features.
 
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