The Ultimate Virtual Machine Backup Checklist
The right virtual machine backup checklist will enable you to perform virtual machine backups correctly. Virtualization technology offers many benefits to businesses and organizations, some of which include enhanced IT efficiencies, reduced operating costs, faster deployment, and many more.
But you must look after your virtual machines and, more importantly, the data on your VMs. The best way to do both is through backups. Many virtual machine providers exist, including VMware, Hyper-V, Oracle, and Citrix. We have curated our VM backup checklist for VMware virtual machines for this guide.
So, let’s dive into the ultimate VM backup checklist.
Snapshots Are Not Backups
You can take snapshots of your VMware virtual machines. A snapshot is a temporary restoration file for your virtual machine. In VMware, snapshots allow quick recovery in case of emergencies, but you should never treat them as backups.
Deploying other methods is preferred if you want to backup VMware virtual machines. On the other hand, you can use snapshots for testing software or apps, tinkering with virtual machine settings, and similar tasks.
Agentless Backups Instead of Guest-Level Backups
Guest-level backups are some of the most common VMware backup methods. A guest-level backup requires us to install a backup agent on each guest OS. These agents can backup data surprisingly effectively, but there is one area where they lack.
Namely, guest-level backups cannot capture the virtual machines’ configuration settings. Unfortunately, your VM might not work properly the next time you recover it through a guest-level backup agent.
So always utilize agentless backups that operate on the host level. Many data protection software offers the ability to perform both types of backups. Moreover, guest-level backups aren’t necessarily a poor choice, but you won’t get the best out of your Microsoft SQL Server, for example, if you’re employing a guest-level backup agent.
So, take the time to install an agentless backup solution directly on your host that can manage your virtual infrastructure.
Properly Utilizing Storage Space
VM backups can take up a lot of storage space. While backups are crucial business continuity practices that protect business-critical applications, you must utilize the right data protection solution to eliminate junk files in your backups to reduce storage space.
The backup file will contain swap files when backing up VMware virtual machines on Windows or Linux. Swap files are temporary files that aren’t required for any business-critical tasks. Simply put, you must find a way to skip these files, as they are essentially useless.
The right way to do that is through data protection solutions that offer the option to skip these files when performing VMware backups.
Use Solutions With Changed Block Tracking Technology
CBT technology was a revolutionary addition back in VMware vSphere 4.0. The technology allows backup solutions to backup only the changes made after the final backup iteration. This means that the technology keeps track of the changed blocks in the VMDK file.
CBD is proven to be a more effective way to backup VMware virtual machines, and you should only employ modern data protection solutions incorporating CBT for your VMware infrastructure. This is why research is crucial when determining the right backup software or data protection plan for your virtual infrastructure.
Use Encryption
Data branches and data loss aren’t anything new. However, even virtual environments are at risk of cyberattacks. For organizations today that want to protect their production data on virtual machines, encryption is considered one of the best practices.
With your VMware environment, you can encrypt your backups to protect the VMDK files themselves. Backup solutions will provide you with an encryption key to use in flight and at rest to ensure a safe and secure backup process.
Without encryption, you risk losing your backups and the data contained in each VMDK file. Therefore, encryption is one of the key features to look out for when choosing the right backup software for your VMware virtual machines.
Install VMware Tools
The final addition to our ultimate virtual machine backup checklist is one that many VMware virtualization experts are familiar with — VMware Tools. VMware Tools is a supportive software that you can install on each guest to ensure the smooth running of guest operating systems.
VMware Tools ensures your virtual machines operate in the best possible way, in addition to giving your guests the best performance. Moreover, VMware Tools allows you to take application-aware backups, ensure communication between host and guest OSs, customize guest OSs, and more.
Most virtualization experts are familiar with the performance benefits of VMware Tools, but the backup benefits and ability to take application-aware backups are too great to avoid. Therefore, make sure you have VMware Tools installed across all guest operating systems.
Conclusion
That concludes our ultimate virtual machine backup checklist for VMware virtual machines. We hope we’ve provided you with the necessary information to ensure future backup processes’ success. Use this checklist when creating your next VM backup strategy and when determining the right backup software for your needs.
