VMware Backup and Recovery

• To properly perform VMware backup and VMware VMs backup, you need to ensure that you have the time, throughput and storage needed to perform the backup.
• Choose the best time — typically VMware backup, like any other core backup, is performed during off-hours.
• Check to see if both the primary and/or secondary storage locations for the VMware backup have adequate space available.
• Determine if any VMware VM backups will address any applications that require specific-processing to achieve application-consistent VMware backups.
• If you plan to use any scripts prior to or post running the VMware backup job, create these before you begin.
• Determine which VMware VMs will need to be protected and which ones will need to be excluded from backup.
• For most cases, you can perform a single-pass backup of VMware, taking advantage of your backup solution working directly with VMware vSphere Storage APIs for Data Protection to ensure that all VMware VMs, their storage and configuration are protected and ready for recovery.

Recovering some or all parts of a VMware VM during loss or even VMware disaster recovery can be achieved just as you need it — the key is choosing the best method for your recovery scenario:

• Instant VM Recovery — quickly achieve VMware disaster recovery of a single VMware virtual machine by running them directly from your Veeam backups to improve recovery time objectives (RTOs).
• Instant VM disk recovery — immediately restore only the individual virtual machine disks directly from a backup file or as First Class Disks (FCD) in VMware.
• Entire VM restore — achieve full VMware disaster recovery by restoring an entire VM directly from a Veeam backup file or VMware replica back to its original or even a new location.
• Guest OS file recovery — when VMware disaster recovery is only needed at the guest OS level, you can easily recover individual OS files and folders from the guests directly from Veeam backups, replicas and VMware snapshots without needing the storage footprint to recover the entire virtual machine.

For VMware backup, there are different levels of VMware that can be protected — ultimately based upon what your needs are to meet your recovery objectives. Solutions like Veeam Backup & Replication will provide block-level, image backups that may be leveraged for a full spectrum of recovery:

• Host-level VMware backup — apply VMware backup at the host level to ensure that you capture not only all of the currently residing virtual machines on the host, but also all the storage, configuration and metadata needed for even the most demanding recovery — including disaster recovery.
• Guest-level VMware backup — within each vSphere host, you can choose to select individual guests to include or exclude from VMware backup. This method allows you to protect individual guest-level operating systems and their associated files so that you can perform object-level recovery at the guest OS level.
• Changed Block Tracking (CBT) — for all VMware backups, VMware provides a built-in capability that journals all changes made to a guest at the block level. Taking advantage of CBT allows VMware backup products like Veeam to only protect the actual data blocks of what has changed since the last backup, resulting in a much faster, smaller VMware backup.
• Also, take advantage of advanced settings for VMware backup, including VMware Tools quiesce, which will help to freeze the file system during VMware backup. Backup software that supports VMware Tools quiesce for VMware backup will capture all blocks necessary for crash and application-consistent backups.