Installation guide

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VMware ESX Server Administration Guide
Backing Up Virtual Machines
Your backup strategy depends on how you want to protect your data and recover
from problems. There are two main goals.
• Recover individual files on the virtual machine (for example, if a user accidentally
removes a file)
• Recover from catastrophic failures in which your entire virtual machine is
damaged
VMware ESX Server provides several possible approaches for backing up your data,
whether to tape or to another system over the network. You will probably find that a
combination of approaches provides the best data protection for your virtual
machines.
The next section, Using Tape Drives with VMware ESX Server, describes how to make
tape drives available to both your virtual machine and your service console:
• Backing Up from within a Virtual Machine on page 174
• Backing Up Virtual Machines from the Service Console on page 175
• Using Hardware or Software Disk Snapshots on page 175
• Using Network-based Replication Tools on page 176
Using Tape Drives with VMware ESX Server
The management interface allows you to allocate a SCSI controller to the service
console, to one or more virtual machines or for use by both environments. To make a
SCSI tape drive available in a virtual machine, you must allocate the SCSI controller to
which it is attached for use only by virtual machines.
You can check the allocation settings for the server’s SCSI controllers in the
management interface. On the Status Monitor page, click the Options tab, then click
Startup Profiles.
Caution: Do not reassign a server’s only SCSI controller if the service console is
running from a drive attached to that controller. If your system is configured this way,
you must add a second SCSI controller to control the tape drive.
Backing Up from within a Virtual Machine
One approach to backing up your data is to back up a particular virtual machine’s data
just as if it were on a physical machine. To do so, you can run either a direct backup
tool or the client component of a client-server backup tool within the virtual machine
and configure it for direct access to the network or tape drive.