Home > VMware ESX backup and ESXi backup – Basic Tips

VMware ESX backup and ESXi backup – Basic Tips

Legacy backup tools are not built for Virtual Machine (VM) protection
If you have a VM failure, it will take hours to recover the machine, complete with OS, application and settings. And, traditional legacy backup tools don’t support backup and recovery testing, instant recovery or other functions required to support virtualized IT environments. Dell AppAssure image-level backup software was built from the ground up to protect your VMware ESX/ESXi servers.

Image-level VMware ESX backup and ESXi backup. With Dell AppAssure, your first full backup is followed by incremental-always backups using CBT (changed block tracking). It works with VMware vStorage APIs to simplify virtual machine recoveries through vSphere or through a dedicated central management screen.

Upgrade with snapshots, but use backups to keep data protected
Snapshots work very well to support software or system upgrades, but an Dell AppAssure image-level VMware ESX backup or ESXi backup – with built in file compression and data deduplication – is far more disk efficient.

Smart Agents™ are Better for VMware Backup
A recent independent lab test pokes holes in assertions that agentless technology is the key to faster and more efficient backups. Tests of one agentless scheme show that it suffers from both slower backups and recoveries than can be achieved using installed Dell AppAssure Smart Agents™. One agentless approach causes 60% – 80% spikes in VM host CPU usage during backups, which in turn cuts the processing power available to each VM on that host. Dell AppAssure Smart Agents™ place no more than a 1% load on the host CPU, so VM productivity is unaffected.

The Benefit of Smart Agents™

  • No agents to license – priced per Socket
  • No administrative steps to deploy Smart Agents. It’s automatic
  • No agents to monitor

Assuring 100% Reliability of Recoverability
Being certain that the whole machine can be recovered – with a working operating system, application and its data – can be a business-critical concern. This applies especially for Microsoft SQL Server-based and Exchange Server applications running in VMware that require application-aware backups in order to be restored to working condition.

Many organizations perform manual backup and recovery drills to test their backups and see if they are recoverable. But these drills are prone to human error and they are time-consuming and expensive. Other organizations don’t have the time to test for recoverability.

Dell AppAssure was the first to offer an innovative and groundbreaking Recovery Assure technology which offers automated testing and verification of recoverability. Backup tests usually confirm whether or not a machine backup is good enough to recover a live virtual machine, but an administrator cannot know for sure if the application inside the VM is recoverable. Dell AppAssure backup software includes automatic application integrity testing which takes place immediately after each backup. It’s designed to boost administrators’ confidence that they will always be able to count on their backup when it’s time to carry out a recovery.

Deduplicate Your Data with True Global Deduplication
Virtual machine populations generate a lot of data, causing disk sprawl and robbing precious network bandwidth. Integrated data deduplication/file compression built into every copy of Dell AppAssure software cuts VMware ESX backup and ESXi backup storage requirements by as much as 90% and removes significant transmission spikes from your network.

Plan for the Worst with an Offsite DR Strategy
There’s no substitute for having offsite recovery capability, especially if your local machines and local backups are destroyed in a disaster. Ironically some VMware backup software supports only local backups, leaving your organization dangerously exposed to data loss. Dell AppAssure is convinced that true data protection means that you should be able to seamlessly recover anything to any location, whether to your server room, an offsite location, or online.

VMware ESX Backup and ESXi Backup Recommendations in Short

  • Legacy backup tools were not developed to correctly protect VMware environments
  • Smart Agents™ offer better protection, create less strain on VMs and host CPUs
  • Recoverability testing of an ESX backup and ESXi backup is the key to an assured recovery
  • Reduce data storage, data transmission overhead with data dedupe and file compression
  • You’re not fully protected unless you can recover quickly, offsite or online

Learn More About VMware Backup >


AppAssure vs Symantec

Dell AppAssure Software for Exchange continuously protects and monitors the health of your Exchange data stores and allows administrators to quickly search, recover, and analyze mailbox content. With Dell AppAssure Software for Exchange you can backup and restore individual email messages, folders, or mailboxes to a live Exchange server or directly to a PST, thereby solving some of your most costly and time consuming challenges.
Dell AppAssure Software for SQL is an enterprise SQL server backup and disaster recovery software solution developed to assure comprehensive protection - including system and user databases, SQL binaries and the server - making it possible to restore both servers and databases in just minutes.
Dell AppAssure Software for Hyper-V is an enterprise-class backup and disaster recovery software solution designed for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V environments. Dell AppAssure Software for Hyper-V supports both host and guest level backup methodologies while delivering accelerated backups, fast local recoveries and disaster recovery, all-in-one solution.
Dell AppAssure Software for SharePoint is an enterprise backup and disaster recovery software solution developed to assure comprehensive protection - including front-end servers, SQL servers and the web servers - making it possible to restore both the entire SharePoint environment, individual SharePoint servers and databases and individual SharePoint objects in just minutes.
Dell AppAssure Software for Windows Servers is an application-aware, server-based backup and disaster recovery software solution that delivers fast application backups, fast local recoveries and off-site disaster recovery, all-in-one solution.
Dell Small businesses typically have limited IT resources and smaller staffs than large enterprises, but with Dell AppAssure Software for Windows Small Business Server they have full access to the same powerful server backup and recovery software tools found in larger organizations.
Dell AppAssure Software for VMware is an enterprise-class backup and disaster recovery software solution designed for Windows workloads running VMware virtual environments. With one price for an unlimited number of guests, Dell AppAssure Software delivers accelerated backups, fast local recoveries and disaster recovery, all-in-one solution.
Dell AppAssure Software for Windows Desktops (VDI) simplifies and automates backup and disaster recovery processes, while giving an administrator the ability to remotely monitor and manage large VDI deployments or geographically distributed machines from a single console.
DocRetriever for SharePoint dramatically simplifies the process of restoring individual documents, sites, sub-sites and folders. SharePoint Administrators no longer need to spend countless hours rebuilding your entire production database, or worry about deploying a temporary SharePoint recovery farm, just to recover an individual document or list item.
MailRetriever for Exchange is an affordable and easy-to-use e-mail recovery software package for browsing, recovering, searching, exporting, and analyzing e-mail and mailbox content directly from any unmounted Microsoft Exchange Data Store (EDB). MailRetriever for Exchange can even open and repair corrupted EDB files. With MailRetriever for Exchange, you are never more than just a few clicks away from recovering a message or mailbox. MailRetriever for Exchange eliminates the need for time-consuming full-server and EDB restores for message recovery.
For individual message or mailbox recovery, Dell AppAssure Software and Microsoft Storage Solutions have partnered together to deliver MailRetriever for DPM, enabling Microsoft Exchange administrators around the world to gain efficient and economical access to message-level recovery.
Dell AppAssure´s Backup software for Kaseya lets you recover from any server failure to physical or virtual machines in minutes, backup and recover either locally or offsite, and provide offsite DR to customers with low bandwidth through integrated deduplication and replication.
Dell AppAssure Backup & Disaster Recovery Software is best way to back up and protect your VMware virtual machines. It doesn´t just support your virtual environment - rather; it leverages VMware ESX, ESXi and vSphere to provide a whole new level of protection for all your virtualized applications, services and desktops. Dell AppAssure Software lets you meet your VMware backup RTO and RPO objectives for less.