One time backup of VM's to USB drive

[stullier]

We are planning some one-time hardware maintenance at our remote sites, and we would like to have a backup of the VM's, in case something goes wrong.

Each site is basically a single ESXi 5.1 host with approximately 5 VM's and 1TB of used space. I am considering using the VEEAM backup free edition to backup the VM's to a 2TB USB drive.

I have zero experience with VEEAM, so I have a few questions:

1) Does this sound feasible or is there a better method?
2) Where would we install the VEEAM backup software? Should it be on a VM with the backup repository pointed to physical machine with the USB drive shared?
3) Are there any other suggestions that you can recommend?

Thanks in advance to everyone.

[PTide]

Hi,

1) Does this sound feasible or is there a better method?

Yes, everything sounds good.

2) Where would we install the VEEAM backup software? Should it be on a VM with the backup repository pointed to physical machine with the USB drive shared?

No need in physical machine - you can install it in a VM, with usb device attached via pass-through. That would be a repo+backup server in one VM.

[stullier]

Thanks, PTide for the response. From reading other posts in the forums, my understanding was that the pass-through option was not optimal due to slow performance.

[foggy]

That's true, however should not be a PITA in a one-time operation scenario. If you have an available physical machine, you can use it as a repository, of course.

[PTide]

In case you decide to use a physical machine then you can use the same one machine as VBR + repo with USB drive attached, that would be more convenient, I think.