I tried using this to backup a free esxi in ssh mode. The issue I had is Thinware vBackup seems to create a snapshot on the esxi host first. The exsi server has about 2 TB total. About 1.5 TB is provisioned for the VM I am trying to do an image backup of. 250 Gig is used by another VM. So when it tried to create a snaphot for the VM, without a warning BTW, it tried to use more than what is available and shutdown both VMs, until I deleted the snapshot that never finished. Also, the VM that has 1.5 TB provisioned is not even using 25% of that 1.5 TB. Creating the a snapshot seems to require double the space that is provisioned, which seems stupid especially since most of it is free space and the backup is being saved on an entirely different machine and this would mean you have to keep the same amount free on the esxi host as you have provisioned for VMs. Is there anyway to create a backup image without have the esxi storage location losing 1/2 of it storage space to acomidate for a snapshot? I would really like to use this as Veeam will not work on free esxi since they not longer support the ssh and only use api, might even have the same issue with that as I have been unable to try it, but at this point trying to create an image backup using Thinware vBackup just breaks the entire esxi host until the snapshot is deleted and never actually backs anything up.

Thats what I thought. Wasn't a bash on the software here. Was just hoping there was another way. Hopfully, I can figure out how to use a USB drive to become a datastore in esxi to hold the snaphot.