How to backup ESXi configuration using VMA

vMA -vSphere Management Assistant it’s free download and it comes with your VMware vSphere.

    First  we need to open a console session on vMA with vi-admin as a user.
    Then enter this command with an -s switch (S  is for save…)
    vicfg-cfgbackup -s -server 195.168.0.10 /tmp/esxi5

To restore the same its quite easy, we can use the same command with -l as a switch (jusyt like “load” configuration). The  ESXi server needs to reboot after the loading the configuration from backup and so we must reply YES to complete the command. The ESXi host will reboot.

vicfg-cfgbackup -l -server  195.168.0.10 /tmp/esxi5

After rebooting the ESXi server finds it’s configuration files restored.