Modern businesses depend on data and IT infrastructures. To maximize the efficiency of hardware resources, organizations build complex multi-leveled virtualized environments using hypervisor solutions such as those developed by VMware. The importance of virtual infrastructures for organizations is significant already, and that importance continues to grow. Every organization that uses VMware VMs in an IT environment should create and maintain reliable VMware backups.
Why is VMware Backup Critical?
The reason to back up VMware workloads and data is simple: when an organization uses VMware virtual machines (VMs), then production entirely or partially relies on those VMs and the data they process and store. When VMs and data are damaged or corrupted, the organization cannot provide services efficiently. Every second of IT infrastructure downtime means financial and reputational losses for an organization.
Moreover, an organization that does not maintain copies of critical data will most probably not survive a major data loss disaster. Therefore, VM backup maintenance is vital not only for public image and profits, but for the organization’s existence. A relevant backup can be used for recovery purposes when VM data is corrupted or damaged.
How to Back Up VMware: Three Ways
A VMware backup approach defines the effectiveness of data recovery in case of data loss. In this post, we will discuss three approaches to VMware backup along with the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. Then, we will share ten tips for achieving the most efficiency when implementing the right VM backup approach for your organization’s virtual infrastructure.
1. Back Up VMware VMs as Physical Machines
A VMware VM and a regular physical workload look identical to an average user. A VM runs a guest operating system (OS) that is isolated from other workloads in the environment while functioning. Thus, VMware VMs can be backed up just like physical machines. To do that, you simply install a backup agent to the system and set up a regular backup schedule.
Backing up VMs as physical machines is an easy data protection approach every admin should be able to implement. It does not require much effort or specific knowledge to set up and run backup workflows.
However, this legacy VMware backup approach has a downside that is critical for the availability of services. With VMs backed up as physical machines, the guest OS and apps are protected while VMs are not. Consequently, this approach makes it impossible to directly recover the entire VM environment.
2. File-Based VM Backup
With VMware software, a VM is stored as an individual file. Protecting an entire VM by backing up that file (usually, it’s a VMDK format file) is a quick and easy way to save critical data. Compared to a regular OS backup, creating a VMDK file copy can take less time. Additionally, the guest OS and its apps are not affected when the file-based backup is performed.
Unlike backing up VMs as physical machines, file-based backups are less flexible when it comes to data backup or recovery. With a file-based backup, the ESXi server captures a VM snapshot, so the only way to recover data is to restore the entire VMDK file. You may be forced to sacrifice more hardware resources and storage space to restore irrelevant and unnecessary data or apps along with the data you need. Therefore, using a file-based backup and restore approach may result in significantly higher recovery time objectives (RTOs).
3. Standalone VMware Backup Solution
To ensure maximum efficiency of backup and recovery for organizations, many organizations with VMware virtualization choose third-party VMware backup solutions. With the ability to create app-aware, image-based incremental backups of VMware VMs, the most advanced third-party software solutions are the preferred choice for both SMBs and enterprises.
The most useful VM backup solutions unite the best features of other backup approaches. Thus, a third-party solution can provide you with the majority of possible benefits while eliminating most of the weaknesses in file-based backups and backing up VMs as physical machines.
Moreover, third-party backup solutions can be versatile and protect virtual, physical, cloud, and Software as a Service (SaaS) workloads in a hybrid IT environment. Install the chosen solution on appropriate high-performance hardware and set backup workflows according to your needs to meet the required recovery objectives (RPOs and RTOs).
Additionally, a specialized VMware backup solution can provide possibilities that would not be available with standard backup approaches. For example, an advanced backup solution enables you to schedule backup and replication workflows to run as often as every minute, thus ensuring one of the tightest RPOs possible. If necessary, you can recover physical workloads as VMware VMs directly from backups and maintain the proper functioning of your IT infrastructure. Furthermore, disaster recovery automation in a comprehensive third-party solution enables you to restore production seamlessly after major disruptions in the IT environment.
VMware Backup Best Practices
If you are looking for an advanced and versatile solution to efficiently back up VMware environments, physical machines, SaaS, and cloud workloads, you can get more information here. Read on for 10 VMware backup best practices to ensure quick recovery of your data and workloads with a standalone backup solution.
1. Don’t Mistake a Snapshot for a VM Backup
Snapshots of VMs were among the innovations that virtualization brought to the table. A snapshot enables you to easily return a VM’s memory and data at a specific point in time. With VMs becoming more popular, virtualization features such as snapshots have become widely used. Unfortunately, many organizations started to use those features incorrectly or for the wrong purpose.
As snapshots enable you to quickly roll back VM data to a specific point in time, many admins began perceiving snapshots as VM backups. But you should avoid thinking of snapshots as backups because a snapshot is not a copy of data but a rollback tool that depends on the structure of the virtual disk. An effective backup should not be dependent on your production environment in any way.
2. Create Image-Based VMware Backups
Legacy backup solutions most frequently rely on the use of agents. Agents need to be installed on the OS to enable backing up the OS itself along with the critical user data. These solutions can back up data but not the hardware used to run them.
Virtualization comes along with “virtual hardware”, which means physical hardware is virtualized and presented to each VM in the environment. An image-based VMware backup enables you to capture not only the data but also virtual hardware and settings that the VM uses to run properly. A sophisticated VMware backup solution supports integration with native VMware vSphere Storage APIs to provide image-based backups of your VMs.
3. App-Consistent Backups Save the Day
In most cases, applications and app data are the most critical components of an organization’s IT infrastructure. The VMs used to run those applications can be secondary. That is why it is important to back up application data properly with app-aware backup functionality to guarantee seamless recovery.
With the application-consistent mode, a backup solution helps ensure that data in file servers and Microsoft apps such as Exchange, SharePoint, and Active Directory remains consistent and ready for recovery. A VMware backup solution flushes the app data to the disk before taking a backup image, thus enabling seamless and fast recovery of app data, including all I/O operations such as financial transactions or personal data transfers.
4. Truncate Logs
A solution that enables running app-aware backups usually has app log truncation functionality built in. Most often, logs can be truncated after a VMware backup workflow is completed successfully.
An efficient and well-designed dedicated VMware backup solution can also truncate logs for apps like Microsoft SQL Server. Therefore, with the log truncation functionality enabled, you can significantly reduce the average storage space needed per backup and optimize the use of hardware resources.
5. Use Changed Block Tracking (CBT)
Legacy backup solutions complete a full backup of VMware VMs each time a scheduled or on-demand workflow is initiated. That results in longer RTOs, non-optimal performance, and increased storage space requirements for backup repositories.
Changed Block Tracking (CBT) is a native VMware vSphere feature that significantly boosts the effectiveness of incremental VMware backups. CBT was a pioneer technology that enabled backup solutions to track data blocks that have changed since the last backup workflow. With CBT enabled, a backup solution can rewrite only the changed data blocks while backing up data. There is no need to create a full VM backup every time.
Thus, using CBT enables you to meet significantly shorter RTOs and optimize the use of storage space in backup repositories. Additionally, the amount of data to process and transfer during the backup workflow is smaller with CBT enabled, so you can use hardware and network resources more flexibly. You can either use additional resources to increase the speed of backup workflows or distribute more computing power and network bandwidth for production purposes.
6. Enable Backup Encryption
Data security is critical for IT environments of all levels and scales. The security of backups should not be neglected either. A production VM backup contains production data, so the data contained there has the same level of importance as the entire production environment.
Backup data encryption is a solid way to secure from unauthorized access. Encrypted data remains unreadable to a reader who does not have the required decryption key. Modern backup solutions use the latest encryption standards to help you encrypt data in flight and at rest.
In-flight encryption means that data is encrypted while being transferred through the network from the source to the backup repository. At-rest encryption ensures that the backup data remains unreadable to third parties after the data is written to the disk. Both approaches are required to ensure VMware backup data safety.
7. Use VM Backup Verification Features
The worst time to find out that your VMware backups are unrecoverable is when the virtual environment is already down after a disruption such as a natural disaster, power outage, or ransomware attack. To ensure that your backups can be used for recovery, pick a backup solution that provides verification features.
A quality VMware backup solution can verify the recoverability of backups right after backup workflows are completed. For example, a solution should be able to boot VMware VMs and then check if the required guest OS services have launched successfully. Another way is to boot a VM, take a screenshot of a guest OS desktop, and roll back to the latest recovery point. The screenshot can then be viewed in the backup solution dashboard or delivered to you in an email report.
8. Tier Backup Data
With a comprehensive backup solution for VMware, you can store copies of your backups in different locations to avoid a single point of failure and enhance the resilience of your VMware infrastructure. Consider following the industry-accepted approach called the 3-2-1 rule.
According to the 3-2-1 rule, you need to store at least three copies of your VMware backup data on storage media of two or more types. And at least one copy should be stored offsite: on a detachable USB-drive, external SSD or HDD, or in a public cloud like Amazon S3, Wasabi, or Microsoft Azure. For long-term archival, consider sending backup copies to tape.
9. Enable VM Backup Immutability
With VMware infrastructures becoming more and more complex to meet corporate needs, the risk of failure due to human error or accidental deletion increases. Additionally, ransomware attacks are becoming more frequent and sophisticated, posing a threat to virtual environments of organizations of all types, scales, and levels.
With a dedicated backup solution, you can enable immutability for backups in locations such as a local repository or Amazon S3 cloud (via S3 Object Lock). Throughout the immutability period, backups remain protected from any change. Therefore, a VMware backup protected with immutability cannot be deleted maliciously or accidentally. Ransomware cannot encrypt immutable backups as well, even after reaching the backup repository.
10. Automate VM Backup and Disaster Recovery Workflows
The ability to use backups to recover VMware VM environments and data after a disaster is important on its own. However, it is even better when you know your organization’s VMware environments and data can be recovered quickly. Fortunately, a solid backup and recovery solution will be able to automate VM backup workflows and disaster recovery sequences to minimize RPOs and RTOs.
With the right backup and recovery solution, you can create custom workflows for planned and emergency failovers, failbacks, and datacenter migrations. Then, the VMware backup solution can monitor the IT environment and send reports when VMs are not responding. Whenever a disaster occurs, you should be able to react quickly by initiating a preset custom disaster recovery workflow to ensure swift recovery from a wide range of disasters.
Summary
Organizations that use VMware VMs in production should back up VMware environments to prevent data loss and maintain the availability of services. Three main VM backup approaches are:
- Backing up VMware VMs as physical machines
- Running file-based VM backups
- Setting up a dedicated VMware backup solution
When you back up VMware VMs as physical machines, you can protect guest operating systems and app data efficiently but you can’t recover the environment quickly because VMs themselves remain unprotected. With a file-based backup, you can protect and recover an entire VM at the cost of longer RTOs, increased hardware and network load, and more storage space required to record backups. A dedicated VMware backup solution can be your best option as it provides a complete set of backup and recovery functions that would not be available with any other VM backup approach.
