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This nice feature in vSphere is able to backup and restore the ESX host profiles which is very useful for the VMware administrator to restore the settings of the ESX host/cluster. In the host profiles, it contain every single information of the ESX servers and allow users to revert back to the previous settings according to the profiles which previously created.

You can browse the host profiles tab from Home > Management > Host profiles

Right Click the empty space from the left corner and select create profile

A create profile wizard will be prompt as show. Select Create profile in this option. You should able to import the backup profile if you have any of it. The host profiles should end with .vpf as file extension.

Specify reference host and click Next to continue

Key in the profile name and description here. I prefer to name it same as my ESX Server

A summary page for the host profiles you going to create. Click finish and your host profiles is created successful.

Now we will try to apply the host profile to the ESX host for restore purpose.

We need to attach the host/cluster to the specify profiles. In this case, I will attach a host to this profiles now.

Select the ESX host and click attach. The host profile will attach to the ESX host after this.

To try the test, I had removed the NFS mount point from my ESX host, and the restoration of the host profile, had success to restore the original configuration before I removed the NFS mount from my ESX server.

Select check compliance to verify the ESX host setting with the profile configuration

Non compliant meant the configuration on ESX server and the host profile doesn’t match.

Now you can right click and select apply, to restore the ESX server with the host profile configuration previously captured.

Here is the summarize after the host profiles been applied. Now I had my previous configuration back after the success of ESX host profile restoration.

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