8:55pm, Bradley Alexander wrote:

> I have a VMware server with a number of virtual servers (as well as a 
> VirtualBox installation on another box).
>
> Is it better to back up the virtual hosts individually or to just back up the 
> VMware/VirtualBox installation? From a space perspective, if anything changes 
> in the virtual machine, does the entire VM get backed up, as opposed to the 
> individual file getting backed up again, thereby making the backups in 
> general smaller?
>
In general, you're better off backing up the virtual machines as if they 
were real machines. That way you'll be able to do incrementals. If you 
backup the files that represent the virtual disks, you'll have to get the 
entire file all over again for even minor changes.
You may want to look around for a specialized backup solution that 
understands VMs, something that can do a binary diff on the disk image 
files. Keep in mind that if you do that, you won't really be able to restore 
by individual files. (That's another advantage of backing up the machines 
individually (from within the OS.))

Paul

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