5 things to keep in mind before backing up your VMware Virtual Machines

The architecture of a virtual machine differs vastly from traditional on-premises environments, and requires different data backup techniques and pre-backup operations. This post will explain some of the things administrators have to keep in mind before backing up their VMware virtual machines.

1. Back up VMware virtual machines at the virtualization layer.

When backing up traditional physical servers, it is customary to install a backup agent on the guest operating system. The backup server then contacts the agent when it is about to initiate a backup operation. This method isn’t efficient in a virtual environment, as it unnecessarily consumes resources on the VM and impacts the performance of the VM and all other VMs in the host.

Make sure that your virtual machine backup tool can back up your virtual machines at the virtualization layer. This means using a backup application that performs image-level backups of the large .vmdk file without involving the guest OS. This will ensure your VMs get all the resources they can for their workloads.

2. Quiesce your transactional applications.

Read the entire article here, 5 things to keep in mind before backing up your VMware virtual machines « ManageEngine Blogs

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