So a couple of months ago or so I had the idea to test and document the use of rsych to replicate VMware virtual machines. Unfortunately my machine is running ESX 2.5.x and I had yet to upgrade to 3.0 so this information is a bit depreciated but I feel that it will be indicative of what I will see on ESX 3.0 (aka – VI3). On ESX 3.0 the process actually becomes much easier because all of the files (.vmx, .vmdk, .nvram) are contained in the same directory structure. So here is a simplistic representation of the commands required to replicate a VM on ESX 2.5, I am also in the process of building an automation script for ESX 3.0:

************ CREATE .REDO LOG ************
ware-cmd ~bocchrj/vmware/rh62_1/linux.vmx addredo scsi0:0

************ STARTING REPLICATION ************
rsync –verbose –progress –stats –compress /vmfs/VMs/rh62_1.vmdk esx2::rsyncVMs

************ REPLICATE VM CONFIG FILES ************
rsync –verbose –progress –stats –compress /home/bocchrj/vmware/rh62_1/* esx2::vmconfig/rh62_1

************ ADDING REDO.REDO LOG ************
vmware-cmd ~bocchrj/vmware/rh62_1/linux.vmx addredo scsi0:0

************ COMMITING REDO LOGS *************
vmware-cmd ~bocchrj/vmware/rh62_1/linux.vmx commit scsi0:0 1 0 1
vmware-cmd ~bocchrj/vmware/rh62_1/linux.vmx commit scsi0:0 0 0 0

************ DONE ************

The process worked well. I captured the output of the initial rsync and the second rsych cycle below:

Initial rsync cycle

Number of files: 1
Number of files transferred: 1
Total file size: 419430912 bytes
Total transferred file size: 419430912 bytes
Literal data: 419430912 bytes
Matched data: 0 bytes
File list size: 30
File list generation time: 0.152 seconds
File list transfer time: 0.000 seconds
Total bytes sent: 85826493
Total bytes received: 38

sent 85826493 bytes received 38 bytes 432375.47 bytes/sec
total size is 419430912 speedup is 4.89

Second rsync cycle

Number of files: 1
Number of files transferred: 1
Total file size: 419430912 bytes
Total transferred file size: 419430912 bytes
Literal data: 1864192 bytes
Matched data: 417566720 bytes
File list size: 30
File list generation time: 0.135 seconds
File list transfer time: 0.000 seconds
Total bytes sent: 344586
Total bytes received: 143405

sent 344586 bytes received 143405 bytes 4337.70 bytes/sec
total size is 419430912 speedup is 859.51

Looking forward to getting sometime to play with this on ESX 3.0, I am lobbying hard for the 48hr day 🙂