Why don’t people just use rsync to back up vmware guests?

  • Because the transfer speeds out of the ESXi console are purposefully limited.
  • Because this isn’t scalable in any way.
  • Because you’d have to drop a statically-compiled rsync binary onto the ESXi host.
  • Because the VMs, the VMDKs, their ramdisk files and other components can change enough to make rsync a losing proposition… do you really want to re-sync a 200GB VM that was rebooted and had a small number of files change?
  • Because of CPU/memory resource requirements on the source or destination. Rsync isn’t free.
  • Because there are other products on the market, both third-party and VMware-provided. Look up Changed Block Tracking.
  • Because ESXi is NOT a general-purpose operating system.

Also see: Install rsync on VMware ESX 4.1 server

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