Backup Jobs fail after upgrade from ESX to ESXi

After upgrading VMware servers, all backup jobs have the following error:

"Invalid SoapPath link: "/vmfs/volumes/YourPath" 'Text' is an invalid XmlNodeType."

The issue occurs because we are not able to use local storage on an ESXi server as the target for a repository because Windows cannot write to a VMFS volume.

You have a couple options.  You can still use local storage of the ESXi host for your backups but you have to do it at the OS level.  You would need to create a VMDK and attach it to a VM residing on that host and make the VMDK the size necessary to store your backups.  You can then create a Windows or Linux repository depending on the OS you are using, to write to that storage through the OS level.

This is a common issue when upgrading from ESX 4.1 to ESXi 5.0. This can also occur when switching from any version of ESX to ESXi.