VMware Backup (Backing up Virtual Machines)

VMware Backup and the backing up of any Virtual Machine environment can create a problem for organisations coming from a distributed computing environment.

There are two different types of backups in a virtual environment:

• File level backup of the virtual machine's partitions is identical to the current process of backing up a physical machine's local or SAN connected disk. It is usually done by installing a backup agent in the virtual machine and backing up files to a backup server via the network. This process is good for virtual machine file level restoration, but lacks the ability to do a bare metal type of restoration if there is a VMFS3 disk failure, a virtual machine is accidentally removed from a disk, or the entire machine needs to be restored
• Backup of the raw virtual machine VMDK and configuration files stored on VMFS3 partitions allows for a complete (bare metal) virtual machine restoration. This is by far the fastest way to restore an entire virtual machine, but would be a bit cumbersome to use for file level restoration.

VMware Consolidated Backup Datasheet.pdf