Getting the ISO files used to install operating systems or the existing VMs you may have onto an ESX / vSphere host can be baffling to new VMware Admins who don’t have the right tool. The “right tool” is a SCP (secure copy protocol) file transfer application. There are a number of free options out there but the “tried and true” SCP program when using vSphere is Veeam’s FastSCP. It has been around the longest and is, by far, the easiest to use.
As part of my new vSphere Pro Vol 2 video training course, I covered the Veeam Management Suite. FastSCP is a free and could be considered a “junior version” of Veeam Backup. In this video, I show you what Veeam FastSCP offers you, why you need SCP with vSphere, how to download and install FastSCP, how to transfer VMs and ISOs to vSphere, and how to schedule file copies between ESX hosts. Enjoy!
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David Davis (CCIE #9369, vExpert, VCP, VCAP-DCA) has been in the IT industry for 20+ years. He has authored hundreds of articles, 10+ video training courses, and co-authored one book. Learn about David's certifications, video courses, and where you can find his content on our 
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Hello all , i need Veeam Backup and FastSCP to use and testing. so who give link to download, Thank you in advance!
Hi,
The link to download FastSCP is in the article, above. But, if you don’t see it, it is:
http://www.veeam.com/vmware-esxi-fastscp.html
Thanks for reading!
-David
David,
Thanks for the FastSCP video….question, when it comes to the root access section, where exactly am I creating the local account to specify? On the host, if so, how do I go about doing that. I tried using Veeam Configurator to add a User but after doing so I am still unable to use the account. Where can I see that this account was created and if I know want to delete that account, where do I go to delete it.
Thanks in advance for your assistance,
Geemail
I believe the local account you are referring to would be a local Linux-like user account on an ESX host that you would create either using vicfg-user or using the vSphere client directly connected to an ESX host and under the USERS tab.
Hope that helps!
-David
David,
Thanks for the reply….I neglected to mentioned the host is ESX 4.1
So, here is what I did, and would like your input if you have time.
1. Connected to the host, Local Users and Groups
2. Created the user (user1)
3. Granted Shell Access
Tried connecting with Putty and it failed with the new user. However, root did work.
Found another article, if I understood correctly, stated when using user other than root, it is necessary to enable root ssh access. Since Veeam Root Access doesn’t support enabling root ssh access on 4.1, I followed the vmware article on steps to enable root ssh access.
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=8375637
Tried Putty again, but still Access Denied.
Then I found yet another article stating changes with the service console ssh access on ESX 4.1 occurred
http://planetvm.net/blog/?p=1705
So I followed as much as I could understand and granted the new user i created (user1) with root & adm priviledges, I then tried Putty and it worked.
I then tried FastSCP again, with user1 and it worked.
I feel like i have gone overboard with permissions and that I should not have had to enable ssh access but nothing else I seem to do worked.
Thanks for any input you have to straighten me out….
I just cannot thank you enough for the nice explanation for the FastSCP.. It tremendously helped me a lot on finding a backup solution for our ESXi server. Just a quick question regarding the schedule copy.. Does the specific vm needs to be powered off for the copy?
Thx