Книга: Mastering VMware® Infrastructure3

Backing Up with VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB)

Virtual machines are no less likely to lose data, become corrupted, or fail the way their physical counterparts might. And though some may argue against that point, it is most certainly the best way for you to look at virtual machines. With this school of thought, you might be jeopardizing the infrastructure with overconfidence in virtual machine stability. It's better to be safe than sorry. When it comes to virtual machine backup planning, VMware suggests three different methods you can use to support your disaster recovery/business continuity plan. The three methods include:

? Using backup agents inside the virtual machine.

? Using VCB to perform virtual machine backups.

? Using VCB to perform file-level backups (Windows guests only).

VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) is VMware's first entry into the backup space. (For those of you who have worked with ESX 2,I am not counting the vmsnap.pl and vmres.pl as attempts to provide a backup product). VCB is a framework for backing up that integrates easily into a handful of third-party products. Although VCB can be used on its own, it lacks some of the nice features third-party backup products bring to the table. These include features like cataloging backups, scheduling capability, and media management backups. For this reason, I recommend that you use the VCB framework in conjunction with third-party products that have been tested.

More than likely, none of the three methods listed will suffice if used alone. As this chapter provides more details about each of the methods, you'll see how a solid backup strategy is based on using several of these methods in a complementary fashion.

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