[NTLUG:Discuss] Backing up live VMWare VM's (on the cheap)

[David Simmons]

Guys,

Was hoping to poll the group and see if anyone has a good
solution for VMWare Virtual Machine Backups on live servers....without
using Vmware's Consolidated Backup program (i.e. - doing it on the
cheap).

Setup - running the free VMWare Server (not ESXi) on
CentOS and have a duplicate machine waiting to receive the backup files
(and be a new host if original host goes down).

I think I can
do something like this:

1)  Run  'vmrun snapshot
/path/to/vmx' 
2)  Copy all files (original and snapshot) from
first server to storage area on second)
3)  Issue 'vmrun
revertToSnapshot /path/to/vmx'   or 'vmrun deleteSnapshot
/path/to/vmx'
4)  Sleep safely knowing things are backed-up

I'm pulling this mindset from:

http://searchvmware.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid179_gci1276253,00.html

but I have the following questions:

A)  which
option do I use with vmrun in step 3)
B)  is this a good way
(without using something like VCB) to do this?
C)  Are there
better methods (without having to suspend the running servers)?

Thanks in advance,

 - dave