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The VMBackup utility provides a graphical user interface that can easily be ran locally on a Linux Virtualization Server. However, since it is an X-Windows application it is also possible to set up a Microsoft Windows system to remotely control VMbackup as well.

In order for this to work, the Windows system must have an XWindows server, which will act as the display client for VMBackup running on the remote system. Fortunately, there is one that is freely available called XMing.

The process for setting up XMing on the Windows system to run the VMbackup GUI for a remote Linux host on the Windows system, is as follows:

1. Download and Install the XMing package available at: http://sourceforge.net/project/downloading.php?group_id=156984&filename=Xming-6-9-0-31-setup.exe
2. Download and Install the XMing font package available at: http://sourceforge.net/project/downloading.php?group_id=156984&filename=Xming-fonts-7-3-0-15-setup.exe
3. If you do not already have PuTTY installed, Download and Install the Portable PuTTY package, available at: http://sourceforge.net/project/downloading.php?group_id=156984&filename=Xming-portable-PuTTY-7-3-0-17-setup.exe
4. Set up an XLaunch Icon for vmbackup
   1. Double click on the XLaunch icon
   2. Select “Multiple Windows” and click the next button
   3. Select “Start Program” and click the next button
   4. In the “Start Program” field put “/usr/bin/kdesu /usr/bin/vmbackup”. Select Using Putty, put the name of the VMware server with VMbackup installed in the “Connect to computer” field, put the userid of the user account in the “Login as user” field, then click next
   5. Click next to accept the defaults for clipboard management
   6. Click the “Save configuration” button
   7. Save the file to your desktop
   8. Click Finish
5. Double click on the new VMbackup icon to run VMbackup on the remote virtualization server. It will ask for two logins, the first is to login to the remote server and the second is to obtain the Administrator (root) privileges that VMbackup requires.

Version 1.07 of the Virtual Machine backup utility VMbackup has been released.  The big news for this release is that VMBackup now has a working although ugly Graphical User Interface for performing point and click backups of Virtual Machines.

This version has the following changes:

• Fixed a bug that caused backups of Virtual Machines running under VMware Workstation to fail.
• There is now a working graphical user interface for performing backups.  For users of the Debian/Ubuntu package VMBackup will be found in the “System Tools” menu.
• The status display is more useful when backing up to a local archive.

More information about VMbackup can be found on the VMbackup homepage and as always, the software can be downloaded from the download page.

A new version of the VMware server/Workstation backup tool vmbackup has been released. New features in this version:

• A major bug fix that corrects issues with the utility exiting before the backup was completed.
• Added new archive formats: uncompressed tar file and iso file. Currently the ISO format cannot be used with remote backups.
• Script now logs to the /var/log/vmbackup directory.
• A mostly functional “Wizard based” GUI has been added (vmbackup.gui)

I am releasing this version primarily for the bug fix. The GUI does work for me, but it does not have as much sanity checking as the command line utility and may generate errors instead of performing backups in some situations.

More information about the vmbackup utility can be found on the documentation page. It is available for download from the download page.

The makeclusterhost utility which creates local host files from information in DNS now has a documentation page at: http://computing.dwighthubbard.info/index.php/software/makeclusterhost-utilty/