On Sat, 3 Nov 2007, Paul Archer wrote: > 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.
I agree; treat the VMs as regular PCs. If the guest OS is Windows and you have no other bare-metal recovery plan, a monthly ASR backup, in addition to your normal fulls and incrementals, is good insurance against disaster. (Because ASR operates on all of C: it's a good idea to keep C: small and store data on another partition). It's a good idea for VMs and real Ms. Keep in mind that if you do back up the VM disk files from the host OS you'll probably need to suspend or poweroff the VM for the duration of the backup, which may take a very long time (vmware recommends this anyway) or make sure the VM disk files are on a filesystem on the host OS that supports snapshots or some other occult mechanism of insuring the disk files are quiescent. Hope this helps! Cheers, Stephen -- Stephen Joyce Systems Administrator P A N I C Physics & Astronomy Department Physics & Astronomy University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Network Infrastructure voice: (919) 962-7214 and Computing fax: (919) 962-0480 http://www.panic.unc.edu ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/ _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list [email protected] List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
