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11 Protecting applications with disk-level backup
This section describes how to use a disk-level backup to protect applications running on Windows
servers.
This information is valid for both physical and virtual machines, no matter if the virtual machines are
backed up at a hypervisor level or from inside a guest OS.
Disk-level backup can potentially protect any VSS-aware application; however, Acronis has tested the
protection for the following applications:
 Microsoft Exchange Server
 Microsoft SQL Server
 Active Directory (Active Directory Domain Services)
 Microsoft SharePoint
Using a disk backup of an application server
A disk or volume backup stores a disk or a volume file system as a whole. Therefore, it stores all of
the information necessary for the operating system to boot. It also stores all application files,
including database files. You can use this backup in various ways depending on the situation.
 In case of disaster, you can recover the entire disk to ensure that both the operating system and
applications are up and running.
 If the operating system is intact, you may need to revert an application database to a previous
state. To do this, recover the database files and then use the native tools of the application to
make the application acknowledge the database.
 You may need to extract only a certain data item, for example a PDF document from a Microsoft
SharePoint server backup. In this case, you can temporarily mount a backed-up volume to the
application server file system and use the native tools of the application to extract the item.
11.1 Backing up an application server
To protect an application server, create a backup plan or use the Backup now feature as described in
the "Backup" (p. 33) section.
Applications that use databases require a few simple measures to ensure the application data
consistency within a disk backup.
Back up entire machines
Databases may be stored on more than one disk or volume. To ensure that all necessary files are
included in a backup, back up the entire machine. This also ensures that the application will remain
protected if you add more databases or relocate the log files in the future.
If you are sure that the databases and their associated files are always on the same volumes, you
may want to back up only these volumes. Or you may want to create separate backup plans for the
system volume and for the volumes that store the data. In both cases, make sure that all of the
volumes containing the necessary files are included in the backup. For instructions on how to find out
the database paths, refer to "Locating database files" (p. 195).