VMware Backup: Methods and Best Practices

Data backups are one of the best approaches that help you protect your VMware data and virtual machines. That said, there are multiple methods that you can use to efficiently back up VMs and guarantee their recoverability: You can back up VMDK files, back up VMs as physical machines or use a dedicated backup solution.

This post explains the advantages and disadvantages of each backup method. Read on to discover the best practices that allow you to perform reliable VMware backups.

Main VMware Backup Options

Organizations with a VMware infrastructure should have a comprehensive data protection plan with regular backups and swift recoveries to ensure business continuity and service availability. Data backups can help reduce the risk of data loss and minimize downtime in case of a data breach or disaster.

You can back up virtual machines in a VMware environment using different approaches. The three main options are backing up VM files, backing up entire VMs as physical machines and using a third-party backup software.

VMware file-based backup

VMDK file backup, or file-based backup, allows you to protect individual files and folders instead of performing a full VM backup. This method is probably the most common among the three explained in this post due to its simplicity and several benefits.

Using VMDK file backups, you can protect only the needed data and avoid backing up duplicate files. This improves the speed of the backup job and reduces storage space consumption since you only back up the needed data. You can also set different schedules for each data type; business-critical files are backed up more frequently compared to other data. More importantly, file-based backups enable you to perform granular recovery and restore specific files instead of entire machines. This is especially useful when you need to recover individual files quickly.

Regarding the disadvantages of VMDK file backup, the main issue is that this might not be the best approach for all data types since some applications necessitate regular full backups to ensure optimal performance. Moreover, organizations with large VMware environments can find it difficult to manually select all the files and folders they need and configure all the backup processes.

VM backup as physical machines

This is the conventional and cost-effective method to back up VMware virtual machines. Organizations can use the technologies and processes they already have to back up VMs as physical machines. The primary advantage here is that SMBs or businesses with tight budgets can still protect their infrastructure without incurring additional costs.

That said, this approach has its downsides. Backup management for virtual machines is generally more complex and demanding. VMs are regularly created and deleted, making it difficult to monitor all these changes manually. In addition, physical machine backups copy all data, which can lead to duplicated data in the case of VMs and, subsequently, more storage space consumption. This can also reduce backup efficiency by making the process more time-consuming and possibly impacting the production environment.

Third-party VMware backup and recovery solutions

Modern backup solutions provide numerous features that streamline the backup and recovery of VMware VMs and data:

• Incremental backup: This technology copies only the changed blocks of data since the last backup, making the entire process faster and more efficient.

• Deduplication and compression: These features further reduce the size of backups by completely removing duplicate data. This means that backups consume less storage.

• Image-level backup: When you perform an image-level backup of a VM, you copy all its information, including operating system, data, state and applications.

• Full or granular recovery: You can restore entire VMs or specific files and folders. Modern backup solutions even allow you to recover data to its original or a custom location.

• Anti-ransomware capabilities: Data protection software usually include features that safeguard backup data from ransomware attacks such as storage immutability, malware scans and encryption.

These are just a few of the many functionalities you can find in modern backup and recovery solutions. However, some organizations are reluctant to invest in such solutions due to their costs. It is also worth mentioning that these tools may require a learning curve.

VMware Backup: Best Practices

Regardless of which backup method you use, there are some practices that you should follow to streamline the backup and recovery processes within your organization. These techniques improve data protection in your environment and maximize efficiency.

Do not use snapshots as backups

VM snapshots and backups cannot be used interchangeably. Each technology serves a specific purpose and using snapshots for long-term data storage can have detrimental effects on your environment. Snapshots preserve the state of a machine at a particular point in time and are primarily used for development and testing. Backups are independent copies of entire machines or individual files that can be stored for an extended period and recovered when needed.

Storing VM snapshots for more than 72 hours is not recommended since they are very resource-intensive and consume a lot of storage space, slowing down the entire environment. Moreover, snapshots are kept on the same disk as the source VM, unlike backups that can be stored elsewhere, so if the original files are corrupted or lost, you cannot recover your data.

Perform application-aware backups

Most modern data protection solutions allow you to create application-aware backups by quiescing the machine. In other words, all applications in the VM are paused and copied during the backup process. This enables instant and full VM recovery with all application and database data usable immediately. This is especially important for Microsoft apps like Exchange Server, Active Directory and SQL Server.

Each platform has its native technology for application-consistent backups: Guest OS Quiescing for VMware vSphere VMs, Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) for Microsoft VMs and VSS driver integration with EBS volumes for Amazon EC2.

Automate data protection workflows

Organizations with large VMware environments can find it challenging to manually configure their backup and recovery workflows. Luckily, most solutions include several automation features that automatically perform data protection tasks.

You can schedule backup, recovery, and replication workflows for a specific time using built-in calendar dashboards. In addition, you can configure jobs to run automatically one after the other without manual interference. You can also apply policy-based data protection rules to back up or replicate VMware VMs that match certain criteria.

Offload your production network

You can separate backup and replication workflows from your production network. This way, you do not impact your ongoing activities and ensure optimal service availability. First, you can apply specific bandwidth rules to your data protection tasks, especially during business hours. Secondly, you can perform LAN-free data transfer to send and receive backup data over a dedicated network. In addition, you can speed up backup and replication jobs to shorten the transfer windows and minimize network load.

Monitor your VMware environment

Some backup solutions provide VMware vSphere monitoring tools that give you complete visibility over your infrastructure. With such features, you can keep an eye on all key metrics in real time and generate reports to optimize the performance of your virtual environment and resolve bottlenecks.

VMware Backup with NAKIVO Backup & Replication

The NAKIVO solution includes all the tools you need to protect your VMware environment efficiently and ensure swift and safe recovery in case of disruption or disaster:

• Incremental and application-aware backups
• Multiple recovery options including full, granular and cross-platform recovery
• Different backup targets including local repositories, cloud, S3-compatible storage platforms and tape
• Reliable anti-ransomware tools such as immutability, encryption and pre-recovery malware scans
• Backup scheduling and automation features
• Disaster recovery orchestration
• IT monitoring for VMware infrastructures