GhettoVCB ESX(i) VM’s backup: E-mail logfile

UPDATE: GhettoVCB now has it’s own function to send a report mail. It only works on ESXi > 4.1.

I’m using an excellent script to backup my virtual machines called GhettoVCB. This script works perfect. I wanted to get the daily logfile in my e-mal inbox. I have ESXi (4.0) and i don’t know whether it can e-mail by itself, i think not. But i used a linux VM i am running, to pull the logfile and mail it to me. The linux VM is set up with sendmail and outgoing mailhost is configured. I you don’t have a linux VM, a windows VM or PC can work too. You can use wget for windows to pull the file (syntax would maybe change a little bit) and then blat to mail the file. I won’t go in detail about this.

I have altered the GhettoVCB script to make the backups & logiles use this date syntax “date +%F”. I find it easier to read for humans. You have to adjust this in the Cronjob that calls the ghettoVCB script, the logfile is given as a paramter.
In the script below, please adjust the youruser and yourpass to valid login credentials for browsing the datastore trough https. Usually the user you login with directly on the ESXi. Also adjust the you@domain.tld, place your e-mail address. Pretty simple & basic but it works excellent. Last point, adjust the 192.168.x.y to your ESXi’s IP address.

#grab esxi backup log file and mail it v0.1
#Note the WGET part should be 1 line, no line breaks
#Adjust the youruser & yourpass to valid credentials for logging in to ESXi (browse the datastore)
#Adjust the IP address (192.168.x.y) to your ESXi ip addresss
#In the wget line below, my logs were located in a folder called backup on a datastore called 750GBdisk2
#You could check the syntax of the link by browsing to your datastore and locate the backup log files then look at the addressbar
cd /tmp
wget "https://192.168.x.y/folder/backup/ghettoVCB-backup-$(date +\%F).log?dcPath=ha-datacenter&dsName=750GBdisk2" --user youruser --password yourpass --no-check-certificate
cat /tmp/ghettoVCB* | mail -s "Backup log ESXi4" you@domain.tld
rm -rf /tmp/ghettoVCB*