I was looking for a simple solution to backup my home lab VMs, something which runs on Linux, lightweight and to the point. After few research and deployments of various solutions, I ended up finding this: https://blog.erben.sk/2014/05/30/vmware-backup-script/ The libraries being somewhat old and deprecated, I decided to write my own, based on pyvmomi (https://github.com/vmware/pyvmomi).
Helpful links:
http://vmware.github.io/pyvmomi-community-samples/
https://github.com/vmware/pyvmomi-community-samples
You will need to have python3 and pyvmomi.
https://github.com/vmware/pyvmomi#installing
Add the name of the VMs to backup in the backup.list file, the VM name which shows in the vSphere Client.
Run the following command with your own VMware environment variables.
~/P/SimpleBackup> python backup.py -s vcsa.domain.local -u [email protected] -p P@ssW0rd! -nossl --backupDS DS_Destination
Copying file [DS_Source] web.domain.local/web.domain.vmx to [DS_Destination] 2022-10-07/web.domain.local/web.domain.local.vmx
File copy finished!
Creating snapshot for VM: web.domain.local
Snapshot creation finished!
Copying disk [DS_Source] web.domain.local/web.domain.local.vmdk to [DS_Destination] 2022-10-07/web.domain.local/web.domain.local.vmdk
Disk copy finished!
Backup finished!
Removing snapshot for VM: web.domain.local
Snapshot deletion finished!