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12 Bare Metal Recovery of ESXi Hosts
The Acronis vmProtect 9 Bare Metal Recovery (BMR) of the ESXi host feature provides a totally
unique functionality that helps you minimize the recovery time if the ESXi server crashes, fails to start
or doesn’t work properly after a patch update. The feature allows you to restore ESXi server binaries
and patches, ESXi configuration, and missing VMs (VMs present in backups, but missing on the
datastores; VMs should be backed up separately) after the ESXi server is recovered and started.
Bare Metal Recovery supports only VMware ESXi version 4.1, 5.0 and 5.1, and does not support ESX.
The following sections describe how ESXi host configuration backup and recovery can be configured.
12.1 ESXi host configuration backup
ESXi host configuration backup in Acronis vmProtect 9 differs from the backup of Virtual Machines.
Note that the ESXi host configuration backup will forcibly enable SSH access for the ESXi host, i.e.
its configuration will automatically be adjusted in order to enable ESXi configuration backups.
To back up an ESXi host configuration, run the New ESXi Backup Task wizard by clicking Actions ->
ESXi Configuration Backup. In the first step of the New ESXi Backup Task wizard (Select an ESXi host
to back up), select the ESXi host whose configuration you want to back up. Select the ESXi host from
the list of all ESXi hosts/vCenter managed by Acronis vmProtect 9 Agent. If you don’t see the exact
host that you are looking for in the ESXi hosts list, make sure that it's added at the Configure ->
ESX(i) Hosts page. Note that ESXi backup supports only ESXi servers. ESX servers cannot be selected
for backup.
After selecting the ESXi host, enter the root credentials (login/password) to access it. In order to
create a backup of ESXi binaries and patches, a connection to the ESXi server is performed via SSH.
This means that root credentials are required. You can check that the submitted credentials are valid
by clicking Test connection. Click Next.
