Deployment Guide

ESXi Deployment Guide 37
• vSphere CLI package — vSphere CLI package can be installed on either
Linux or on Microsoft Windows operating systems.
• vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) — vMA can be deployed on an
ESX/ESXi host.
Both the packages are available for download at vmware.com. For information
about setting up and running the vSphere CLI, see the VMware vSphere
Command-Line Interface Installation and Reference Guide and VMware ESXi
Embedded and vCenter Server Setup Guide at vmware.com/support/pubs.
The backup and restore steps given below are on the assumption that you
have already imported the vSphere CLI to a system other than the one you
want to backup or restore, or that you have installed the Windows or Linux
management Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
Backing Up the Configuration of Your ESXi Host
To back up configuration data of a host:
1
Start the vSphere CLI.
2 Run the vicfg-cfgbackup command with the -s flag to save the host
configuration to the specified backup filename.
vicfg-cfgbackup --server <ESXi-host-ip> --
portnumber <port_number> --protocol
<protocol_type> --username root --password
<root_password> [-s <backup-filename>
The -portnumber and -protocol options are optional. If you
exclude them, the defaults are port
443 and protocol HTTPS .
NOTE: If you do not specify a password in the command line, you are
prompted for one when the command executes. For example: vicfg-
cfgbackup --server 172.17.13.211 --username
root –s backupdate.dat
NOTE: If your administrative password includes special characters, such as $
or &, you must include a backslash escape character (\) before each
special character.
Restoring the Configuration of Your ESXi Host
To restore the configuration data of a host:
1
Turn off any VMs that are running on the host you want to restore.